Family Business
by Rational Lunacy
Summary: What if there was only one ghoul in Minnesota? It took Adam's mom and tried to kill him, and his brothers stopped it. When Dean and Sam come back from all this 'apocalypse' business that they won't tell Adam about, will he still want to be a hunter? AU
1. Sugarcoat

Okies

**NOTE:** This isn't outright explained bluntly within the story so I'm going to say it here. This is what if there was only one ghoul, and it took adam's mother. So adam was adam the whole time, he didn't die and was resurrected. He just was a lucky SOB. :] Good times.

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 1 - Sugarcoat

Adam sat on the kitchen counter holding a frozen bag of peas to his left eye. It hurt terribly but mostly it itched. His eye wanted to open, but couldn't, and so his eyeball was moving restlessly behind the swollen shut lid. He was hoping that if he held the frozen veggies to his eye long enough it would settle down. But he'd been sitting there for nearly thirty minutes and there'd been no settling.

"How's the eye, dumbass?"

Adam looked up from his knees, to find his eldest brother standing before him, flexing his bruised right hand. When Adam didn't answer him, Dean clucked his tongue and quirked his lips up into a brief smirk that lasted only a second. He shook his head.

"I can settle for you not talking to me," Dean started, "cuz honestly, I haven't known you that long, kid, I won't sleep any less at night, and whatever keeps you here, in college-"

Adam laughed, "Well if I don't mean anything to you, then why are you trying so damn hard to protect me, huh?"

Dean faltered, licking his lower lip, he seemed to do that when he was trying to backtrack. He rocked back onto his heels and shoved his hands into his pockets before looking at Adam again.

"Alright, alright, you got me," Dean muttered in a conciliatory tone of voice, "so I care a little, I mean, shit I got a lot of good reasons to hate you, kid, but the fact is, you're family. It may not seem like it to you, but my dad—_our_ dad, was doing his best to keep you safe from this fucked up family business we got going, ok?"

Adam grumbled, "Yeah right, I see how 'keep me safe' and 'lying' can sound so similar."

"Kiddo, you were there, damnit, you saw that thing," Dean snapped, pointing towards the living room where just the night before a ghoul that had taken on the form of his mother had tried to kill Sam, "it nearly killed Sam, and it killed your mom, and it woulda killed you because you don't know a thing about this life-"

"I could if you taught me!"

"Adam, you have got to listen to me-"

Adam leapt off the counter, landing awkwardly due to one arm being so rigidly in place holding ice to his eye. He glared at Dean out of his good eye, his right hand curled into a fist.

"I don't _have_ to listen to you, ok?" Adam shouted, "Those things, the kind that killed my mom, they're out there, and I'm not just going to sit around and do nothing and act like the world is normal and safe because it's not-"  
"Oh cut the bullshit, brat," Dean rolled his eyes, "don't go claiming a revenge trip, alright, we killed the thing that killed your mom already, you saw it happen. And those other things? That's me and Sam's job, not yours."

"It could be mine-"

"What you _should_ be doing is going to school, going to stupid, drunken, _great_ parties," Dean paused there, looking dazed for a moment before pulling himself together, "and studying like geek-boy, and all that kid-crap that you're supposed to do. You grew up normal, ok, you were raised for that kind of life, not ours."

"That doesn't mean I can't change-"

"-but it means you _shouldn't!_" Dean cried, his arms spread wide and the exasperation clear on his face.

Adam stood there, feeling more tired than he'd ever felt before. Not even when he'd stayed up for two days straight cramming for an exam had he felt this exhausted. He slumped, falling weakly against his left hand which still clutched at the bag of peas against his eye. For a minute that was all that seemed to be holding him up. A hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed, shaking him like a leaf.

"Oh c'mon, you look even more pitiful than Sammy."

Adam could feel the good natured grin radiating off of Dean's face. He was really trying to make him feel better, even after a fight that Adam had picked. It was the second one that he'd started that day, hence the swollen eye. Adam was lucky that this time when he'd started yelling at Dean, his brother hadn't punched him again, like he had last time.

"Dean, I don't care about the hunting, really I don't, ok?" Adam confessed. He'd hoped it wouldn't have to come to this, him admitting his stupid, girly _feelings_ about this whole thing.

"Well great, then why the fuck have you been kicking and screaming about it so much?"

"Dad was really important to you and Sam, right? I mean, not that your mom wasn't important, but you were little when she died, and you only knew so much of her, so-"

"Kid you better start making sense fast, I don't have enough patience for you."

"Well I loved Dad, alright, but him dying wasn't as shitty as my Mom, dying, ok? All I have left is you two, and yeah, ok I have my college friends, but it's not the same. I don't want to be alone, I want to be with you guys, and since you're hunters, I figure I'd be less of a burden if I was one too, that's all. It's not about the hunting, it's about being with my family."

Adam couldn't bring himself to look Dean in the face to say all that sentimental crap. He would have said it to Sam but he didn't know where he was, and if he went to Sam about it than it would probably make it look like he was lying. At the moment though he was regretting it, and he was so scared that Dean was going to hit him again, call him a dumbass, or a stupid kid, but somehow nothing seemed worse than him laughing at him.

"Kid," _and here we go,_ Adam sighed, "I know, ok, I know-"

"What if Sam just decided that you should go off somewhere and be safe and not be with him, and be all alone? Huh? What would you do?"

"That's different, Adam, I'm the oldest here, it's my job to keep _Sammy_ safe, not the other way around. Sure it's nice to have cover, but I'm the one-"

"-doing all the protecting? Do you have any idea how cliché that sounds?"

Dean's hand fell off his shoulder and he snorted, his voice suddenly sounding bitter, "Well I do now."

The front door opened and shut, and Dean turned away from him, hand going to the gun in his jacket. Sam appeared in the kitchen holding two bags from the burger joint down the road, and he relaxed, only slightly.

"Have you two been fighting this whole time?" Sam frowned, setting the acquired food down on the kitchen counter.

"No, we've been cuddling," Dean spat, sarcasm oozing from his voice. Adam flinched, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

"_Dean_," Sam sighed, "why don't you go for a drive, alright?"

"No, I'm not leaving till I smack some sense into this-"

"_Dean_," Sam interjected, "not a suggestion."

"Since when do you order me around, huh?" Dean squared his shoulders and brought himself up to his full height, which still left him a head shorter than Sam. Still, Sam cringed slightly, looking smaller next to his older brother.

"Since you've been yelling at the kid all day long, and he deserves a break, alright? You can pick right up again when you get back if you want to, but take a fucking _break_."

Dean rolled his eyes and grabbed at the bags on the counter, digging around in them for his precious bacon cheeseburger. Finding it he grabbed it and one of the fries before storming out of the kitchen, and the house. Adam could hear the familiar creak of the old impala's doors opening and slamming shut. Then the engine revved, and he could hear Dean pull out of the driveway and speed off down the street.

"You want your dinner?" Sam asked gently, wringing his hands.

Sam's voice was so fragile sounding, like he was talking to a five year old, and it made Adam feel awkward. He shook his head and mumbled, 'maybe later' before dropping the peas onto the counter and fleeing from the room.

* * *

Adam woke up to the sound of a yelling match downstairs. He was sprawled out on his bed, his face in his pillow. His eye was cursing him for leaning so heavily on it, but it was a brief throbbing that died down to a dull background noise. He could open his left eye, but just barely, and it was no longer restless so he left it shut. There was no light coming in through the window, it was night time by now. He'd crawled up to his old bedroom, which his mom had kept the same since he'd left. He hadn't been gone long enough for her to turn it into a craft room or anything like that. That, and he'd always visited her often enough, to do his laundry, get a casserole to tide him over till he had enough money to buy more ramen, whatever, he was there every other week at the least. So his room remained the same, and there he was, in the same position he usually was when he slept after a spectacularly fucked up day.

It seemed as though his brothers were arguing, and Dean sounded like the winning party, just by the tone of Sam's voice rather than Dean's. He slipped out of bed and padded over to the door. He didn't remember leaving it open, but maybe one of them had come to check on him or something. _They probably did, knowing them and their assumption that I never left elementary school_, Adam thought resentfully.

Adam wedged himself carefully through the small opening, hoping to avoid making any noise as he left his room. He perched himself on the top two stairs, leaning down to get a small glimpse through the banisters. His brothers were standing in the living room, shouting at each other, and judging by the fresh looking bruises, they'd already taken a few swings at each other. In that moment, Adam realized he _did_ feel like a little kid...watching his parents fight.

"We can't just up and leave without telling him, Dean!"

"Yeah and we can't tell him why we're leaving either, he's crazy, it must be something in the Winchester blood but you know he'll try to follow us!"

"And so what if he does, Dean? Big deal, he could help."

"He couldn't help even if we started training him this second, he wouldn't be ready and we don't have the time to be cartin' a baby around, Sammy, we don't, and you know it."

"He's not a baby, Dean, he's nineteen."

"Didja hear that, Sammy? Nineteen, _teen_, which means teenager, which means _kid_, pubescent pile of stunted growth that will whine and cry, alright? And you know what, fine, if he goes through school, he tries the normal life, and after we fix things he _still_ wants to join our fucked up life, then ok, but not right now."

Adam's fingers dug into the carpet on the stairs. He'd already done plenty of whining and crying that very day...Dean was right. Adam pushed himself up to turn around and go back to his room when the step creaked. He heard his brothers pull out their guns and whirl around to face the stairs. Dean was the first to lower his weapon.

"Alright, kid, c'mon out," Dean sighed wearily.

Adam stood still, holding his breath. If there was anything that he could truly say he already hated about Dean, even though he'd only known him for maybe a week...it was that stupid nickname. He turned around and looked through the banisters again, and saw Dean waving him down, with the hand still holding his gun. _If these two ever have kids, they're going to be the weirdest dads ever..._Adam thought.

Slowly, fearfully, Adam descended the stairs. He found himself standing in front of Dean the way he used to stand in front of his mother. His arms behind his back, his left hand holding onto his right elbow, and his gaze glued to the floor. Adam heard Dean sigh and nearly jumped through the ceiling when his brother tapped him on the side of his head with his gun.

"Ah, so there is someone in there," Dean smirked.

Adam snapped, "Of course there is, now what is it? I want to go back to my room."

"Oh gee, I dunno, how much did you hear, maybe?"

"Just you two arguing over how to ditch me and how useless I could be," Adam mumbled.

"Good, now go to bed."

Adam recoiled inwardly, feeling as though Dean had punched him again. He didn't even try to deny it, because as bluntly as Adam had put it, that was what his brothers had been arguing about. He didn't realize it, but he licked at his bottom lip and rocked backwards on his feet, just like his brother. But instead of gathering the courage to look up at him he merely shook his head and turned around, heading for the stairs. Dean didn't try to stop him, but Adam heard Sam try to. No doubt, Dean shushed him.

Adam walked up the stairs, back to his room as he had said he wanted to do. He stopped in front of his door, seeing the mark etched into it...it looked familiar. Sam must have taught him about it a few days ago, but he couldn't remember for the life of him what it was supposed to mean. He looked down to the carpet and found a line of salt on the inside of the door, he must have stepped over it before when he'd crept out of his room. A mark just like the one on the door was on his bedroom window, and here was salt lining the window frame.

Adam stood in front of his bedroom door, wondering what could possibly be coming after him. The ghoul was dead he watched his brother kill it.

"Hey."

Adam almost screamed when a hand clamped over his mouth and he was turned around, Dean scowled at him.

"Not that I don't want you alerting anything, we're safe, but really, the shrieking gets old."

Adam nodded and Dean released him. He took in a deep breath and was about to ask what all the precaution was for. Dean didn't give him a chance to speak.

"Adam, there are a lot of horrible things out there, things that Sam and I need to hunt, in the morning, we'll teach you how to secure your dorm room in this same way, and you will, do you understand me?"

Adam nodded, afraid to say even the word 'yes'.

"Good, now get in there, and get some sleep, I don't want you up and wandering around in the night, ok?"

Adam nodded again, and Dean shooed him into his room. He shuffled in and the door was pulled shut behind him. Adam went over to his bed and climbed in. He pulled the blankets over himself and stared at the closed bedroom door. Of course Dean hadn't told him what the salt and carvings kept out, he wouldn't. Salt kept out spirits, Adam knew that much, but he was pretty sure that there weren't any spirits out to get him. He'd have to look it up later.

* * *

When Adam woke up, it wasn't because Dean or Sam had woken him up, intent on teaching him what Dean had said they would in the morning. He was woken up by the light spilling into his room through the window. A shadow in the form of the mark drawn on there was resting on the carpet, and Adam sat up in his bed. He listened, wondering where the sound of bickering, teasing, or arguing could be. He knew it wasn't there because his brothers weren't there. They'd left, just like that, they'd left him. Adam bolted out of bed, out of his room, and down the stairs. He went into the kitchen, the dining room.

It was in the living room that he found their 'note'. They were going to teach him how to secure his room, just not directly. They'd left him detailed instructions, a reference book, and a recording of them both explaining things to him. But they, themselves, were gone. No doubt they'd left hours ago, it was already ten in the morning. Adam wanted to yell, or growl, or break something, but he couldn't summon the energy, despite how well he'd slept. So, he read the 'lesson' provided, and he stored it away for future knowledge. He listened to the tape they'd left, and stared at the player as the message went on.

"Alright, kid," Dean's voice said, "you better be ready when we get back."

"It's gonna be a while, we won't lie to you about that," Sam said in his gentle, 'good cop' voice to Dean's 'bad cop'.

"But when we come back for you, you better be ready because if you still wanna do this, you're still kicking and screaming...we're gonna put you through hunter boot camp...and it won't be pretty."

The tape stopped, and Adam laughed.


	2. Ketchup Soup

**NOTE:** Lol, so here's the next chapter. Time skip ftw. I'll be back tomorrow with more, just at the moment I need to pass out. My endorphin high from walking twelve miles has finally left me, so off I go to dreamland. Thanks for the wonderful reviews so far! :]

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 2 - Ketchup Soup

Adam propped himself up on the cool wood floor, squinting at the clock. The glowing red numbers told him it was eight in the morning, and the angry buzzing it emanated made him fumble for the plug. Adam relaxed as the sound died instantly when he yanked the plug from the wall. It was exam day, he had to be at the lecture hall in two hours. There he would sit in a crowded room, shoved into a chair with a cramped little writing desk for an armrest and he would take a test that would determine his grades for that semester. He took a deep breath, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale-

_BUZZ_.

Adam opened his weary eyes and glared at his cell phone. Who could be calling him this early in the morning? Not Amy, no, he dumped her several months ago, because his brothers could show up any minute to get him and he had to be ready. It had been two years and he hadn't heard anything from them, nothing. He'd thrown everything away, and now, all he had was his classes and an apartment he could barely afford that was barren of furniture. No more friends, no more girlfriend who was probably out of his league anyways. He would graduate from college, he would be normal, Dean and Sam were just a far away memory and-

_Bing_.

Lazily he snatched the phone up from the floor and read the message on its tiny screen. It said, '1 new voicemail'. He dialed the number and was about to listen to the message when he got another call. Adam fumbled with answering it, but managed to not accidentally hang up on the person.

"Hey, why didn't you answer the first time, kid? Did I cock-block ya?"

Adam's chest tightened, feeling cold.

"Kid?"

How fitting, two years, just long enough for him to stop caring, to stop wanting, and to lose everything..._that's_ when they call?

"Hey! Adam? Are you there?" Dean's voice was no longer joking, or merely concerned, it was panicking. Adam had to say something.

"Hi," he rasped. When was the last time he ate or drank anything? _Whatever..._he rubbed at his eyes to remove the sleep grit.

"What's going on, kid? Are you ok?"

"I'm fine...what's up?"

Adam could hear Dean laugh, "What's up? We're coming for you, that's what, though I'm wondering where you are, your dorm mates say you've disappeared."

_Oh great...I can't let them see me like this, no way...so much for a normal life, I'm a hermit, all I do is study and work and do my assignments..._Adam was filled with embarrassment as he looked around his empty apartment, and at himself, so different from when they'd last seen them.

"Adam? Where are you?"

"Oh, I uh, I moved into an apartment off campus."

"And? Address?"

Adam didn't hesitate, too afraid of the consequences if he did, "NW 42nd St. I'm in the, uh, grey-ish brick building, the sign says Wayside Apartments, I'm on the fifth floor, apartment 7E."

"Alright, we'll be there in a few minutes."

The dial tone could be heard after that, Dean had hung up. Adam looked around, wondering what he should do, if anything. He lived in a one room apartment. There was the main area which included a very small kitchen, and then there was a bathroom, and that was it. The floor was bare and the only things in the room were his blanket and pillow, and a basket for his dirty clothes. His backpack and school supplies were neatly arranged in a corner, and his clean clothes were folded and stacked next to his dirty laundry basket. Automatically, as he did every time he woke up he began folding his blanket and setting it against the wall, his pillow on top of it.

The kitchen was clean because he hardly ever used it. He wished he had time to go out and get a case of beer to keep in the fridge, so he had one to offer Dean when he arrived...but he'd be there soon-

_Knock Knock._

Adam hurried to his feet, moving quickly to the door and unlocking it before Dean broke it down. When he opened it he saw both of his brothers looking...tired? Mostly they looked worried, and Adam felt ashamed. They wouldn't want to train him now, not with him like this.

"Adam?" Sam questioned, as if he couldn't believe that it was really him.

"C'mon in, guys," the laugh he tried to get out to ease the conversation along ended up a raspy cough. His brothers slid past him into the room and looked around, taking in the cramped apartment. Adam shut and locked the door behind him.

"Ok, what the fuck happened?" Dean asked, blunt as ever.

Sam shook his head, "Adam, please don't tell me you pay more than three hundred dollars a month for this place..."

Adam ignored Sam's plea, because he couldn't tell Sam what he wanted to hear. He paid five hundred, and that was just rent and electricity and water. He didn't pay for heating, and he always carried his garbage with him on his way to school and snuck it into a local coffee shop's dumpster so he didn't have to pay for the garbage man to come through and take it. He was even considering stopping the electricity payment because he hardly kept the lights on and he showered in the mornings, and it would cut down on his bills...

"Um...well, I dunno, I guess-"

"You 'dunno'?" Dean interjected, making little 'quote' marks with his fingers.

"I got really into my studies last year, ok? I guess I turned into a bit of a hermit, and I started drifting away from my friends...so to make my scholarship last longer and get more peace and quiet I stopped living on campus and moved over here," Adam explained. _So it isn't a _bald faced_ lie, just a little one..._

Dean's eyebrows lifted up briefly in a show of mock-surprise, and there was a flash of that familiar, dangerous smirk. He shrugged his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye.

"That sounds like a load of crap."

Adam found himself wringing his hands and staring at the floor. This was not how he'd expected it to go. Hell, he'd thought he'd see them a lot sooner, and that everything would be great and he'd be ready to go. But they'd taken so long, and now he wasn't ready, and Dean was probably going to-

_CRACK._

Adam reeled back from the force of the punch Dean delivered to his jaw. He held up his hands in front of his face and backed up. When his brother didn't try to hit him again, he tried telling the truth. The whole truth. Leaving Amy, drawing away from his friends, trying to prepare himself for when his brothers would come to get him. When they never did, he focused on school to get away from it, and then, somehow he end up here. He was 5'10" and barely 130 pounds, when last his professor saw him, he told him to get some help, see a doctor. The money he saved by eating less often was just enough to put into savings, and that was a good thing, he could use it later, and he was so focused on his studies anyways, most of the time he forgot to eat.

"Adam, I am so sorry we took so long, but it's over now, we're here, and if you want to, you can come with us-"

"No, hold it Sam," Dean snapped, "don't go apologizing for his breakdown. We didn't tell him to alienate himself, to turn into this, we told him to live a normal life while he waited for us, that it was going to be a while."

"Dean-"

"No, this isn't our fault, and we sure as hell ain't fixing it."

Adam watched, not really listening as his brothers argued. He wasn't offended, or hurt by anything Dean was saying. He didn't even feel sorry for himself, or feel pathetic. Mostly he was confused. So was he going with them, or not? The fight went back and forth, and as it did, Adam started looking in his cupboards to try and see if he had _any_ food he could offer his brothers. There were a few cups of ramen, and a fudgesicle bar that was covered in a thick layer of freezer burn. A sad , flexible carrot and an expired carton of orange juice was in the fridge. He sighed. When he closed the fridge and turned back around to continue being a spectator to the bickering he noticed it had stopped. They were staring at him now, Sam looking sympathetic, but aggravated at Dean, and Dean just looked mad. Adam was starting to believe that Dean never looked anything but mad.

"I was...just seeing if there was anything I could make you but...unless you want to eat ramen and drink tap water from the faucet I don't have anything."

"Shit, kid, don't you _eat?_" Dean barked.

Adam shrugged, "Sometimes, so...um, am I-"

"_Sometimes?_"

"Uh, yes?"

"When was the last time you ate? And not ramen or ketchup soup or saltines."

"I dunno, um, Dean-"

"You _don't know?_"

"Dean-"

"What's wrong with you?! Ok, we're getting you a burger, c'mon."

Adam managed to snatch a t-shirt from his clean clothes stack and pull it on, and yank on his tennis shoes. His keys were in his pocket only seconds before Dean jerked him out of the room by the arm. Sam was quick to follow.


	3. A Monkey's Uncle

Family Business

Chapter 3 - A Monkey's Uncle

Sam leant against the wall of the Taco Smell. Every few minutes he would glance through the windows at his little brother, who was sitting their slowly trying to eat more food than his stomach could probably handle. He'd tried with little success to explain this to Dean. When the body gets used to running on so little food, it can't take more than that. It will _hurt_ to try and eat more, and Adam would be throwing up within the hour.

At first Dean had tried to take him to a burger joint, but he'd asked Adam which one he'd rather go to. He'd picked one at random, but Dean could tell that Adam didn't really want to go to it, and after a yelling match the malnourished boy admitted he'd rather go to the Taco Smell. So there they were, and now the kid was inside, eating his lunch.

"Damnit, Sammy..."

Sam turned away from the window and saw Dean walk out of the building and come towards him. He leant up against the wall next to him and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. He shook his head.

"I had no idea it would be this bad..."

Sam sighed, "No idea, Dean? How long were we gone?"

"That shouldn't matter! He was just fine when we left!"

"Dean, he just lost his mom, she _just _died, you remember how you were when Dad died, how we both were?"

Dean's jaw tightened and he stared across the lot at the impala. His tongue swept over his upper lip and he ran his hand over his face.

"But he was fine, Sam, you remember, he was kicking and screaming but only cuz we weren't taking him with us."

"The death hadn't really hit him yet, Dean. Suddenly he knew what was out there, that his brothers were hunters? That's a pretty big distraction, and not only that we gave him hope that we would come back for him."

"So would you rather say we weren't going to show up, huh? I thought you wanted to bring the kid along!"

"I did, that's not the point, since we had to leave, we should have left those instructions for him and that was it. Giving him that hope made him expect it sooner and-"

"So you're saying that hope royally fucked him up?"

Sam rolled his eyes and let his head fall back against the wall, "Yeah, Dean, I guess I am."

Dean snorted, "Yeah, whatever."

They both looked through the window towards Adam and found him not there. Dean growled like a wounded bear, 'oh _c'mon!_' and barreled into the restaurant. Sam rubbed wearily at his forehead, knowing where Adam would be. He went into the building, moved past Dean towards the bathroom. He pushed open the door and went in, and the first thing he heard was his brother throwing up. Dean appeared behind him and groaned. Sam said nothing, but he did give him a pointed 'I told you so' look.

When Dean opened his mouth Sam shushed him.

"Why?" Dean mouthed.

Sam mouthed back, "Just trust me, wait outside."

Dean rolled his eyes but did as he was told. Sam walked over to the sinks and stared at himself in the mirror, waiting for Adam to come out of the stall.

"You okay in there, Adam?"

"I-I'm...ok," Adam wheezed, spitting into the toilet and then flushing it.

"You really shouldn't have eaten that much, you know?"

"Like I had a choice, are you kidding me?"

Sam really felt for the kid. When he was younger and him and Dean were with their dad, the chain of command went like this: Dad was in charge of Dean and Sam, and Dean was in charge of Sam. Sam did what Dean told him, and especially what his Dad told him. But if he was ever going to survive riding around with them, he was going to have to cope with it. When Dean got like this, he wasn't mad, he was scared as hell. Sam was surprised that Dean was so worried. It was only a bad thing if Adam ended up scaring himself to death over Dean's emotional constipation.

"Yeah, I know..."

"Was he ever like this...with you?" Adam all but mumbled, but thankfully the bathroom had an echo.

Sam turned around and made himself look at his brother instead of the floor. Just thinking about the days when he was more like Adam, and Dean scared the shit out of him, made him revert to old habits.

"Yeah, it was a long time ago, I was younger, younger than you. Man, he scared me more than anything, but that was then, and I've grown up, and I know he's really just worried. We're both a little messed up, you know? When he's worried he gets angry, it's just how he is."

"You can fight back, though."

"Hey, I couldn't always; and when we train you up it's not like we're not going to teach you how to fight, and then you can fight back all you want," Sam laughed, "but don't make a point of it, ok? There's a difference between defending yourself and picking a fight just for the sake of one."

"Yeah, yeah," Adam smiled for the first time since they'd last seen him two years ago, and Sam felt truly accomplished.

* * *

Dean had heard enough. He stalked out of the restaurant and over to the impala. He sat down on the trunk and rubbed at his face with both hands. Sammy had been scared of him? He wasn't now but...but he still had been. _Great, just great, I'm horrifying, _Dean grumbled, _this is crap._ He wasn't scary, his little brothers were just pussies, and clearly Sam had grown out of it...sorta, Dean still had to save him all the time. But next to Adam, he looked like the best of the best. _When Sam looks like the best hunter in the world, there's a problem..._

He saw Sam look out the glass doors and so he waved to him to get his attention. His little brother—_brothers_ shuffled out into the parking lot. Adam was watching his feet as he walked, and Sam was looking right at him, offering a reassuring grin. So the runt was still avoiding his eyes but at least Sam seemed to think he was better now. Dean picked himself up off the trunk and got into the drivers seat, turning on the car while he waited for Sam and Adam to get in. Sam fell into the passenger seat and Adam into the back.

"Alright, so Adam...I honestly can't tell if this is a stupid question or not, but, do you still want to come with us?"

Dean looked at him in the rear view mirror and saw a brief flash of a smile on the kids face and felt his own tension dissolve a little. Adam gave him the affirmative, so Dean started heading back to his craptastic excuse for an apartment.

"Sam, whaddya think? We get his stuff together and we take him to Bobby's?"

Sam scratched his head and chuckled, "Sounds like hunter boot camp to me."

"Who's Bobby?" Adam inquired shakily.

"Your uncle," Dean quipped, and that was that. He glanced at Sam and said, "alright, you wanna hit a bar or two before we leave town?"

Sam rolled his eyes and Dean rolled his as well, "Who am I kidding? Even in the good ol' days you hated fun and good times."

"I don't hate fun!"

"Do too."

"Fuck you."

"Bitch."

"Jerk."

Adam laughed, and Dean smirked. He wanted to spook him and whirl around with his game face on and demand what was so funny, but he felt like he should give the kid a breather. Sam asked though.

"What?"

"Haha, it's just, this must be what it feels like to have both parents in the car at the same time, if I had the kind, you know, that were on Jerry Springer, or something," Adam kept laughing, his head even falling back and his snickering becoming more of a crow.

Dean's eyes narrowed in confusion, "Kid, I saw pictures of your parents standing right next to each other-"

"Oh, yeah, for the kodak moments, sure," Adam's laughter petered off slowly, and his voice sounded nostalgic more than bitter, "but they weren't more than a one-night-stand to each other, you know? They were friendly with each other, but it was like they took turns being the parent and they shared me. They weren't close enough to bicker."

Dean hummed his acknowledgment to the explanation but didn't say anything. He didn't really have anything to say to that. He was raised by only one parent, so he had no idea what it would be like to be raised by two that traded him back and forth. What really surprised him was Sam didn't even try to carry on after that.

* * *

They went back to his apartment and grabbed his things. Adam mentioned that they should stop by the school so he could officially disenroll, rather than just disappear and maybe have someone come looking for him.

"Agh, that'll take a while, won't it Sam? How was it at your school?"

Sam looked like he was going to explain but then decided on, "Yeah, it'll take a while."

Adam shrugged, "You could drop me off at the administration building and then go to the bar while you wait."

Dean grinned in a way that could only be described as lecherous and clapped a hand on Adam's shoulder, "See Sam? Even he thinks I should hit the bar."

Sam rolled his eyes, "There's one within stumbling distance of here, Dean, I'll take Adam to the school."

"What? No, man, the car, she's my baby, helps me get chicks."

"Dean, you don't need the car to get chicks."

"Wow," Dean smirked, "that's flattering, Sammy, I didn't think I could get you to say it."

Sam glared at him but before he could say anything the keys to the impala were handed to him and Dean was out the door. Adam looked up at Sam and chose to not push his luck with the less scarier of his two brothers. Instead he turned around and started collecting his things.

It was nightfall by the time Adam had ditched school, and Dean convinced him to keep the apartment for one more night. Adam unfolded his blanket and set his pillow down on the floor. He looked at it, and then at his brothers. That blanket was just perfect for him, because admittedly he wasn't too tall and it wrapped around him like a sleeping bag. Sam was a sasquatch, and Dean was taller than Adam, and they were supposed to all fit under that blanket. Hah.

In a few minutes they were...well...they were well acquainted. Adam was wedged between his brothers who both had their backs to him. Being the stubborn Winchesters that they were both had a firm grip on the blanket. Adam's forearms were pressed in between Dean's shoulder blades, and his knees poked into the backs of his thighs. He sort of wanted to die. They were, for the sake of their sanity, all still dressed in jeans and t-shirts, which made Adam feel somewhat better.

_How are they both asleep already?_ Adam wondered, bewildered. Dean was snoring and Sam was muttering sleep gibberish. If he lifted his left leg and rested it on top of Dean's, and slipped his right arm up and his left arm over Dean's torso, he could even be comfortable. But was he that desperate? _No, no I'd rather die._ Sighing, Adam let his head fall forward and lean on the back of Dean's neck, feeling beyond embarrassed by even that. But Dean didn't stir, he kept right on snoring, so Adam relaxed and fell asleep.


	4. Endearment

**NOTE:** Does anyone have any clue where Bobby actually lives? Cuz like, I know that Adam was in minnesota, and it seemed to me that the 'road house' with ellen and jo was in nebraska, and that bobby wasn't far from there...but maybe I'm juts confused as shit. If no one knows, I'm going to stick with Nebraska.

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 4 - Endearment

Dean was not ready to be awake. He wasn't sure if he was ever _ready_ to be awake, necessarily but more tolerant of the matter at some times. Sitting on the floor a foot away from his face was an alarm clock that told him it was nearing noon. Then another two feet behind it was the wall, which was covered in a pristine, unmarred coat of gray paint. The foot boards matched the color of the wooden floor, and were similarly markless. The floor might have had a bit of dust somewhere in the room, but Dean couldn't find any. The whole 'room' itself, because it couldn't really be called an apartment, looked and felt like a person that had been gutted. Anything that might have made such a bad place to live seem somewhat lived in wasn't there.

Maybe if he was in a better overall mood, Dean would have gotten up and scrounged up some breakfast for the boys. But he was lazy and there wasn't anything to be found in Adam's pitiful kitchen anyways. _Speak of the devil..._Dean was being rather loosely and awkwardly embraced from behind by the runt. A stick like arm and leg were draped over his side, and he could feel Adam's forehead at the nape of his neck. The kid was fitted to his back as if they'd been molded to match that way. But that's when he noticed a bigger problem. He had to wake the losers up sometime...

"Damn, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I haven't woken up to someone else's morning-wood since we shared a bed in high school and you finally became a man, Sam," Dean groaned, rubbing at his eyes. Instantly Adam's arm and leg were yanked off of him as if he'd been burned, and Dean could feel him squirming.

"Fuck you, Dean, it's too early for you to be a jerk," came Sam's expected reply.

"It's too early for you to be a bitch."

"Shut up, the both of you, and let go of the blanket so I can get the hell out of the crossfire!" Adam yelled over them.

Dean's eyes widened in total surprise. The kid had grown a backbone while they'd been asleep? How had he missed that?

"Someone's not a morning person-" he tried, amiably.

"Aaah!" Adam roared, shoving Dean forward and peeling the blanket off.

Suddenly Dean was forced into the cold of the room whereas before he'd had the baby pinned to his back with the blanket held over the three of them, trapping their body heat around them like a warm cocoon. _Fuck it's cold, that brat is _so_ going to get it..._Dean grumbled to himself.

Dean glanced at the slammed bathroom door and scowled, "Jeez, I forgot how melodramatic teenagers are."

"He's twenty-one now, Dean, not a teen."

"He acts like one."

"Whatever-"

"And it's not early, it's almost noon."

When Dean looked at Sam, expecting a swear he saw him plaster his hands to his face and sigh instead. Sluggishly he found himself crawling back to the blanket where he slid under it an pressed his back to Sam's side. The blanket almost seemed like it fit them when it was just the two of them. It was so much warmer under that blanket, the ghost warmth of a third person was still stuck to the underside of it, and Dean sighed in comfort.

"C'mon Dean, it's time to get up and go, we're taking Adam to Bobby's today, remember?"

Dean rolled his eyes, pulling the blanket up to his chin, "I'll get outta the bed if you do."

"What bed? We're on the floor—oh never mind, fine."

A few minutes passed and when they heard the shower turn on, and Sam still hadn't moved, Dean laughed. _Then_ Sam got up. _Damnit, shoulda known the laugh would have riled him,_ Dean thought. Sam towered over him, a 'well?' sort of look on his face. Dean forced himself to push off the blanket and get to his feet. He rubbed at his arms and scoured the floor with his eyes, looking for his warm leather coat. It was actually off of the floor, set on the counter instead. Hurriedly he snatched it and pulled it on, but found that it was just as cold as the room itself.

"Damnit, kid, don't you pay for heat somewhere in that monthly five hundred dollar scam?!" Dean tried to holler over the sound of the shower water.

"No! Just rent, electricity, and water!"

Dean stared incredulously at the bathroom door and then at Sam, "What the fuck?"

Sam shrugged, "I'll start putting his things into the car."

Dean nodded, awake enough to be grouchy and tease his brothers into moving, but not awake enough to bother answering with words if he didn't have to. Sam picked out a shirt, and some clean darks from the pile next to the basket and opened the bathroom door long enough to throw them in there. There was a squawk of protest but it was sort of delayed as Sam had acted so fast. Then he grabbed the stack of clean clothes and wedged it under his right arm, and grabbed the basket, hobbling over to the front door. He propped the basket up on his right knee for a moment so he could open the front door and then he was out. Dean patted himself down for the keys to the car and figured Sammy must still have had them. _Eh, don't get the entertainment of him getting all the way down to the car and back up to the apartment when he realized he couldn't open the trunk..._

Sam had made it back up to the apartment a few times before the shower stopped running. Then, Sam was standing right next to him, staring lazily at the bathroom door waiting for their brother to hurry up. The door opened and Adam came out looking ruffled and wet, holding his dirty clothes in his hand. He glanced around nervously and Dean puckered his lips, putting his hands on his knees.

"You ready to go, you little cuddle bunny?"

Adam looked anxious at first, than indignant, and then, just tired. Dean loved how he could see the kid go through the stages of being teased: fear at having been caught doing something wrong/embarrassing, anger at being teased and the thought to tease back, and finally acquiescence, the acknowledgement that it probably just wasn't worth it. Sam no longer had the first step, and usually he went straight for the third, because if he went through step two every single time, they'd _never_ stop fighting.

"Sure, you guys put all my stuff in the car...?"

"Yep," Sam started, and Dean added, "you sure gave us plenty of time with that nice long shower."

Sam shot him a glare, like, 'back off, man.' But Dean was having too much fun.

"Did you need some 'you' time? Though, I dunno, waking up to me, like that, I'd imagine you'd want your privacy-"

"Dean will you just shut up? Alright? Hah hah, you're so funny, now go start the car," Sam snapped, handing him the keys.

Dean glanced at the kid and noticed he was so far from the miffed reaction he would have (and did) get from Sam. Instead he looked mortified, and like any actual personality had been sucked back into himself with a vacuum. Dean sighed and grabbed him by the ear, dragging him towards the door. The surprise of the act causing him to yelp and jolt back to reality.

"Hey!" he yelled, and Dean felt relieved at getting some noise out of the kid. Him yelling was far better than him staying quiet.

Once he was out the door, Dean did let go of Adam's ear, but instead he wrapped an arm around his shoulders and put him in a headlock, walking with him that way. Eventually he did stop struggling and shouting, instead leaning slightly away from him and following at an awkward amble. Sam was behind them, and Dean could feel him rolling his eyes without having to look at him.

Normally, Dean was so lazy he'd cut off a handicapped person for the elevator. But he couldn't pass up the opportunity to have his kid brother stumble down five flights of stairs in a headlock. Plus the way Adam would grip to his t-shirt where it snagged at his ribs and practically squeaked when he missed a step was highly entertaining. They made it to the ground floor and Dean relinquished his brother so he could talk to the landlord and give up his apartment, and hand over the keys.

The three of them sauntered outside and assumed their usual positions in the Impala: Dean driving, Sam in the passenger seat, and Adam in back. They were two states away from Bobby's, but having made the drive to his house from just about every end of the country by now, Dean figured he could get them there by the end of the day.

* * *

Adam realized quickly that any conversation he could conjure up did not fit with his brothers. The two of them had a grim, fucked up sense of humor. They'd seen the craziest shit, and Adam guessed that made them crazy by now too. Adam, on the other hand was fairly normal, aside from the whole, finding out his dad and brothers' real jobs were to hunt evil creatures he'd never thought were real thing. Oh, and his mom...well, so he was a little less normal now. But he was nowhere near in the same league as Sam and Dean, yet. So instead, after a while, he laid himself down and buckled himself in with the middle seatbelt, and slept.

Every once in a while Dean would make a point to turn up the music really loud and roll down the two front windows, probably just to wake him up for the sake of being a douche. Adam got used to it, and when he'd be periodically woken up he'd sit halfway up and make sure he found Dean's eyes in the rear view mirror. Then, after a few minutes of seemingly unjustified teasing, the music's volume would lessen and the windows would roll back up.

The next time Adam woke up, the sun was setting, and the music had been cut off. They'd stopped. His brothers got out of the car and Adam made himself sit up and undo his seatbelt. He opened the door on the right and nearly fell out he was so dazed. Squinting against the fading sun which was at the perfect height to hit him right in the eye, he observed his new surroundings.

There were plenty of trees, but not evergreens, all the lose-their-leaves-come-winter kind, and there were plenty of old cars littered about. They were junk, and looked like they were going to be made into scrap sometime soon. The house they were parked in front of was old and worn, but not old in an antique way. It reminded Adam of the kind of house that a happy couple bought, raised their kids in, retired in, and stayed in even after their kids moved away, up until the day they died. He felt like there should be a grandkid or two sitting on the creaking wooden porch, and some old hound dog lounging at someone's feet. Unconsciously his eyes were searching for a rocking chair.

"Hey cuddles, hurry it up!"

Adam noticed the glare didn't even make it to his eyes, he'd repressed it so fast. He shoved his hands into his jean pockets and shrugged his way to the porch. Dean grabbed his arms and hoisted them up so his hands came back out in the open, and then he pulled the screen back, and let himself into the house. Adam wondered what was so wrong about walking that way until he realized that was one of Dean's habits. He probably looked like a copy-cat twelve-year-old. A slouch settled in his shoulders and he walked in ahead of Sam, who was waving him forward.

If Adam had thought the outside of the house looked like an outfit someone had worn for decades, then the inside of the house was like a person itself. It smelled like leather and books and the ambiguous person who lived in it, his supposed 'Uncle Bobby' who he guessed probably wasn't his uncle at all. Dean was enjoying a playful banter with some middle aged man in a trucker hat who looked like he was as much of a part of the house as the walls and floor. He was wearing a t-shirt that was stained in several different places and colors, with a flannel button up shirt hanging open over it. He scratched occasionally at his face-frame beard, which had its gray patches, and snorted every few minutes like he couldn't believe what he was hearing. He was talking to Dean, so Adam couldn't blame him.

"Aha, so this is the baby Winchester," the man Adam assumed must be Bobby greeted him, stepping away from Dean when he finally noticed Adam, "how you holdin' up?"

"Um...fine?"

"I see," Bobby nodded, though Adam gleaned that he probably didn't appear 'fine', "have these idiots fed you at all?"

"Yes," Adam answered instantly.

"Today?"

He hesitated only a second, the 'yes' was already on its way out of his mouth when Bobby gave him an 'uh huh' and glared at Dean and Sam.

"C'mon, boy, let's see if we can't get you a sandwich or something, you like turkey?"

Adam didn't particularly like turkey, he found it dry unless it was slathered in gravy, and even then it wasn't his favorite. But he nodded all the same and followed the man after another brief stutter in motion. He could feel Sam's worry and Dean's irritation buzzing at the back of his head and he wondered if it was always going to be this awkward.

The kitchen was just large enough to fit a well acquainted crowd, and Adam found himself herded over to a nicked and scrubbed wooden table. It was set into a corner, so Adam was sitting up against a pale yellow wall with his elbows on the table. Bobby asked the boys harmless questions about how things had been, had things settled down, where were they headed next, didn't they want to rest for a while, etc. Adam felt out of place in the same way he had when he'd been in the backseat. It was like he was a spectator to a life that wasn't his, he was watching it on the television and every so often one of the characters would look through the screen, right at him and ask him something. Adam found it quite startling but he fared well enough. He figured that he was building up a reputation for himself as being jumpy and easily startled, so he didn't bother hiding it or covering up.

"Kiddo, are you listening?"

Adam wondered why everyone seemed to associate him with some variety of the word 'kid'. He nodded.

"Do you want any greens on this sandwich, condiments, or should I just scrap the bread and hand you the turkey?" Bobby stood behind the island counter, his back to the sink and the kitchen window, a cutting board in front of him. On it was two pieces of bread that looked like wheat, and a few slices of deli-turkey.

"Um, mustard would be ok."

"Ok."

Adam felt odd talking, and he was happier not saying anything. So when he did have to talk, he felt like his voice wasn't his, it gave him an itchy, nervous feeling to hear himself say anything. He watched Bobby dig around in the fridge for some mustard and he applied an ample amount to the sandwich and clarified with him if he wanted anything else. Adam shook his head and in a minute there was a plate in front of him on the table, on which was a sandwich he would only eat if someone else made it for him. He picked it up and took a huge bite, to try and appease Sam's increasing worry which he could feel from across the table. It bothered him a bit how easily he could choose what did and did not show on his face. For instance, he was gagging slightly on the wheat and mustard combination, he'd never liked wheat, and mustard was only good to him when used in small amounts, but did he grimace? Of course not.

It took a while of him slowly chewing and taking more bites of his sandwich for Dean and Sam to return their focus to Bobby and start up another conversation. This time the chatter made sense to him, it was about his 'training', so he tuned in.

"We'll be working him from the ground up, how to fight, shoot, handle spirits-"

"-everything he needs to know," Dean finished quickly, keeping Sam from rambling.

"Alright, good luck with that."

Even Dean looked surprised, "...what?"

"That sounds like it's going to be a lot of work, so, I'm wishing you luck with your endeavor."

Adam laughed inwardly at how Bobby could so easily get his brothers turned around. He was leaning on his hands which were pressed against the island counter. Eventually Dean glowered at him and asked him if he would be so gracious as to help them with the task.

"Well, princess, when you just come out and ask someone something instead of waiting for them to offer, you might just get what you want," Bobby explained, in a 'well, who could have guessed?' sort of voice.

Adam was thankful that Dean's attention was so riveted on the man behind the counter instead of him. He was fairly confident that if the hateful glare that was on Dean's face at the moment was aimed at him, he would wet himself...or freeze...or something else embarrassing. The very thought of anyone calling Dean 'princess' was vastly amusing in an all-together-horrifying way.

"So," Sam started, hopeful to cut through the tension Dean was emanating, "Adam, why don't we go outside and see how much you know already, so we can figure out where to start."

"Ok."

Again, he was herded like livestock through the interior of the house until he was led outside into the fresh evening air. It was a sticky-warmth that greeted him in the front yard, due to them being in the midwest in early June after all. He was slightly worried that Dean, Sam, or Bobby might ask him about something that Sam had covered in his 'self-defense-against-monsters-crash-course' from two years ago, and he wouldn't remember, and answer wrong. But instead, Sam simply told him to come at him with the intent to kick the ever loving shit out of him. Adam wondered if he thought he was crazy. Him, against Sam? His big brother was taller than most basketball players, and had long limbs, and hands that could probably crush his throat with minimal effort. That, and Dean was sitting on the porch, distractedly sipping a beer, watching the show.

Still, when he didn't move, Sam told him to try and relax and focus on him. Adam tried, he really did, but it was hard. He felt like any move he made would make him look like an idiot. It took him a while, and plenty of Sam's 'sentimental crap' as Dean pronounced it from his perch, before he decided that he was going to look like an idiot for quite a while regardless. He might as well get it over with.

Adam darted forward and tried to punch Sam in the stomach, but instead found himself on the ground so fast he felt nauseous. Somehow Sam had grabbed him, twisted him around and tripped him up, and then he was lying in a dust cloud. A hand appeared before him, and Adam took it. Sam helped him to his feet.

"Well, you're fast, and that's good, but attacking me head on like that while I had a solid footing wasn't the best idea," Sam offered, "you should try to get me off balance so it's harder for me to grab you. Try again."

So, Adam tried again. He swung in, just as fast as last time, and when Sam went to grab him, he ducked under his arms so he was behind him. He had only a second before Sam could turn around and he tackled him to the ground with his head smashing into the small of his back. His arms were wrapped around Sam's waist and they seared with pain at being trapped between him and the ground when they landed. Sam wrangled out of his grip so easily, that Adam was baffled and didn't think to watch out for the fist aimed for his jaw. He reeled backwards and was wheezing in and out nothing but dirt, again.

"Better, but..."

Adam nodded as Sam's advice washed over him. It was hard to concentrate and think ahead when he was trying to get the upper hand on someone who stood a good head or two taller than him. But he was going to try. For the next several hours, even after the sun set, Adam grew accustomed to the words 'Much better, but...' or 'Good job, but...'. There was always a 'but' after each compliment, though Adam found it didn't bother him too much. Whatever it was that Sam pointed out, Adam usually knew as soon as he was helped up from the ground. Most 'stupid moves' he made he realized were stupid a second after he made them.

When the lamp pole a couple yards away, and the porch light weren't enough anymore for them to see clearly Bobby flagged them down and told them they were done for the night. Adam had been sweating for hours and then continuously thrown into the dirt, so his body served as the chicken while the dirt served as the shake & bake mixture. He stumbled blearily towards the porch, his eyes half-lidded. He nearly ran into Dean on his way up the steps, and when his brother started speaking, trying to get his attention, he jumped to the side and fell over the railing. After having been tossed down and helped back up so many times already that night Adam picked _himself_ up easily even though he greatly wanted to just stay on the ground and pass out.

"Cuddles, you gotta get over that startling thing of yours," Dean shook his head at him in exasperation and partial amusement, "really, it's for your own good that you do."

Adam just nodded and Dean stared at him, his gaze pinning him to the porch steps, keeping him from going inside and collapsing on the floor. He took another sip from what looked like his fifth beer.

"I swear, one of these days you're going to leap to the side and end up in front of a bus, or throw yourself into an electric fence, or something crazy and stupid like that."

Adam nodded again, knowing that both of those were very likely scenarios. He wondered if maybe he shouldn't have been so accepting of that fact, but he was too tired to really care. His mind was wandering to and fro, not really latching onto any one question or comment, and he mostly felt like he might fall asleep on his feet.

"Kid," there was that blasted title again, "go get some sleep, already, you look like you're in a coma."

Adam nodded, his default reaction to any given statement or question. He tripped over the steps until he managed to reach the door. Inside, Bobby's voice told him to head upstairs, he could have the second room on the right. He dragged his feet over to the stairs and pulled himself up to the second floor. Only a few more feet, and then open the door, and there would probably be a bed in there, and he could sleep. He forced himself to make the distance, and when he fell onto the bed, dirt coated, smelling like a lawnmower gone to shit, he didn't even crawl under the covers. He passed out as soon as he landed.

* * *

A strange rhythm developed in their training that gave Adam a reliable structure to lean on. If he wasn't sparring with Sam, he was running loops around the neighborhood with him at a pace which he typically would only adopt if the hounds of hell were after him. Then there was the ridiculous workouts that Sam would randomly spring upon him. If Adam wasn't sore in some way, then it was because Dean had stuck him with Bobby for a day and he was studying about this creature and that.

Since Sam had dominated the area of hand to hand combat and general physical conditioning, Dean taken over weapon training. Adam spent a few days simply taking guns apart and putting them back together, and learning to clean them. Then he learned how to load them, and how and where to keep them on his person. After he got used to holding them, he got to shoot at Dean's empty beer bottles, and of course, he was smacked into learning to shoot with either hand, 'in case for some reason your trigger finger's broken.' Learning about knives was strange because he had never thought they could come in such a variety as his brothers kept in the trunk of the Impala. But with time he understood that each kind had a specific use, or were better for this or that circumstances.

Both his brothers and Bobby traded off on teaching him the aspects of rites and rituals and the supernatural. Bobby focused a lot on demons, and exorcisms, and things to 'check for' and how to do so in a clever way. His brothers covered the more general things, like types of ghosts, how to look for them, etc. One of the his least favorite lessons was how to quietly and quickly desecrate a grave with Sam, Dean and Bobby acting as the 'guards' that might find him.

Overall, it was sort of surreal. The things he was learning were weird and sort of messed up, he knew that. He couldn't imagine learning all of this as early as the age of seven, like Dean and Sam had. But then, one day in the middle of it (after nearly a month or two had passed), when Adam seemed to be progressing fairly well with all of it, his brothers caught wind of a hunt they couldn't resist. It wasn't far, and as they discussed it in the kitchen over breakfast it seemed as though they were already figuring it out from what little information they had. Adam shook his head at them but said nothing.

"Alright, now cuddles, you can stay here and study up on your Latin with Bobby while Sammy and I go and handle this job," Dean told him through a mouthful of syrup and Belgian waffle. The nickname 'cuddles' had really stuck, and somehow it bothered Adam less than 'kid' but more than 'brat'.

"And just keep doing the workouts we've been doing while I'm gone, I don't want you getting lazy-"

"-if you can't shoot Bobby's hat off my head from a mile away and blindfolded when I get back, I'll be disappointed."

Adam stared dumbly at Dean, barely managing to stop the 'are you fucking crazy?' look from appearing on his face. On some level he wanted to protest, to demand why he couldn't go if the hunt was expected to be so easy. He knew, however, that if he was going to have a trial run, his brothers would want to pick it out, and surprise him. They were both restless and itching to get back on the road and hunt _something_, and even a 'quick salt-and-burn' job as this, was making them jumpy. Adam didn't want to ruin their first hunt in two months, so he didn't try to get them to let him go. He would stay at Bobby's and 'study'.

After breakfast, Adam cleaned up after his brothers. He helped Bobby with the dishes, and listened to Dean and Sam rumble around upstairs, 'packing' and discussing the prospective job with the kind of enthusiasm that some people had about climbing Mount Everest. It was bewildering and at the same time, incredibly endearing.


	5. Too Fast to Stop

**NOTE:** This is filler...no I don't really know why nothing is happening. Something will happen next chapter, I swear. Adam's thought process is just too much fun to write, for me, and poor Dean, doesn't know how much he hulk-smashes. *heart*

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 5 - Too Fast to Stop

Adam sat on the porch, watching his brothers drive away. He wondered how long they would really be gone. They'd both agreed that it probably wouldn't be more than a week, two weeks at the most. Bobby was plainly informed that if they were gone for more than two weeks and they hadn't heard from them than it was time to worry, but no sooner than that.

"Alright boy, you remember what they said, no sitting around, twiddling y'er thumbs," Bobby told him.

Adam laughed, "Yeah, I know."

He got up and hurried inside, intending to start the day with a shower. Usually he tried to shower at night, if he wasn't too exhausted, that is. But without either of his brothers there to give him a good reaming for not being out on a run at nine in the morning, Adam decided to take his time. After a good solid week of teasing over his 'long girly showers', Adam could be in and out and clean as a whistle in ten minutes or less.

Adam shut the bathroom door behind him and started peeling off his clothes. He'd already gotten dressed because he'd had no clue his brothers would be leaving for some job. He glanced briefly at his reflection, but found his eyes drawn back to it. He certainly wasn't as sickly as when they'd picked him up, and at least _some_ of his hard work was starting to show, but he was still lanky and skinny. Both Sam and Bobby had kept telling him that if he wanted to be fit he had to eat just as much as he was burning. You just kept losing weight if you ate less than the energy you burned. The goal for Adam was to not only _gain_ weight, but to gain muscle, and to get in shape. Mostly he'd just been gaining 'some' muscle and endurance.

He just didn't like eating. It felt wasteful to him, and Adam never really had an appetite, nor a craving for certain foods. Most people, even when they weren't hungry, might suddenly want some chips, or a soda, or an ice cream cone. Adam didn't have that. Maybe he was wired wrong? It wasn't even that he 'forgot' to eat, because he never thought about it, and he was never hungry. Though he was doing 'better' he supposed, considering he was now eating at least one ample meal a day, and sometimes two if Bobby or Sam could get a hold of him and make him sit down and eat. Whether or not he felt hungry, they told him, not eating was still having an affect on his body. He was weaker, he got headaches and dizzy spells, and he even grew heavily nauseous. But Adam had been that way for the past two years, after a while he'd gotten so used to it he considered it his normal.

Before he could even realize it, he was in and out of the shower in six minutes. Adam growled at the air, feeling frustrated that he was too well trained now. He'd _wanted_ to take a 'long girly shower', and yet couldn't keep himself from taking a shorter one.

Adam slipped his clothes back on and cleaned up the bathroom, putting the bathmat back up, the small rug in front of the tub was hung over its edge, and the shower curtain pulled closed. Then he opened the bathroom door and left it open, to let the steam out. He meandered down the stairs and started looking for his shoes.

"Hey boy, after you run yourself tired, you wanna go fishing?" Bobby hollered at him.

Adam pulled on his shoes, they'd been hidden in the pockets of his jacket, which was hung up on the coat rack. No doubt a parting gift from Dean. His old standby of a simple nod never worked when he was too far from the person, so he called out to Bobby 'sure' before heading out of the house.

* * *

Sam watched the world fly by, he tapped his fingers on his leg to the beat of the music pumping out of the old car's stereo. They were out again, and he was happy. It was a simple case, or so he hoped, and it wasn't far off. They'd been stuck at Bobby's for two months, training Adam and avoiding every job they heard of. But for the time being there wasn't much more for Adam to learn that he could get from practicing at home. The rest of it would be gleaned from experience out on the job, so they'd both agreed to get back to work sooner rather than later. What Sam didn't understand was why they'd left Adam at home. Something this quick and painless seemed like the perfect test run for their little brother.

Dean was sitting in the driver's seat, pushing a hundred miles an hour, using his wrist to steer them down the straight path of asphalt. He hummed along to the music, singing every once in a while, his head leaning in his left hand. Sitting still, land locked, and not working was like torture for him, wanderlust ground into him since day one. Sam could tell that as soon as he'd sat down at the breakfast table and started talking about the job with Bobby that they'd be out the door by noon, if not sooner. He was in such a good mood that Sam was worried about messing with it. Why ruin such a good thing? _But who says this'll ruin it?_

He'd been enjoying the itch to get to work the whole time they'd been driving. He'd tried to ignore the question buzzing in his head, but now, they'd been driving for hours, and it still wasn't leaving him.

"Dean," Sam started, "why didn't we bring Adam with us?"

"Needs more practice."

Sam turned his eyes away from the view outside the speeding impala and onto his brother, "What are you talking about? He's as ready as he's gonna be for a job."

"Sit tight, Sammy, we still haven't taught him the finer parts of this job-"

"Like what?"

"Like how to impersonate a government official, for one," Dean answered, "and also, how to be a person in general, haven't you noticed how out of it that kid is?"

Sam rolled his eyes, "What are you talking about? Like we aren't a little messed up?"

Dean sat up straight in his seat and ran a hand through his bed head hair, "It's not that, Sam, I mean, he's a skeleton, he doesn't talk, he doesn't look us in the eye-"

"He looks me in the eye," Sam interjected, "This is just a phase, Dean, he'll get out of it."

"Oh, right, being terrified of your big brother, that's a phase we all go through," Dean snapped.

Sam wondered how the question had escalated into an argument so fast. That was how it always was with them, though. If they weren't fighting it was usually because they weren't talking to each other at the moment, or they weren't in the same space. But if there was ever a time they fought the most, it was when they were stuck in the car together.

"How long, Sam?"

Sam's eyebrows knitted together, "what are you talking about?"

"How long were you scared of me?"

"Oh, Dean, c'mon-"

"Tell me!"

"I dunno, till I was fifteen maybe? Whenever I started getting taller than you," Sam answered with a slight hint of trepidation swelling in his chest.

"God _damnit!_" Dean slammed the palm of his left hand onto the steering wheel and the window, "So fifteen years? I'm gonna have to wait that long for him to outgrow this, huh?!"

"I think it'll be different for him, he didn't grow up with you, Dean," Sam offered, "so maybe when he's hunted for a while, and he spends more time with you in close quarters he'll calm down."

"Yeah, maybe, well lucky him he didn't grow up with me, huh?"

"Dean-"

"No, fuck, Sam, you're supposed to look up to me, copy me, you know, little brother things, not be scared to look me in the eye until you're almost out of high school."

"I did all those things, Dean, I just-"

"What's so scary about me, anyways? I mean, Sam, we hunted creatures that most kids have nightmares about, and you're scared of _me?_"

Sam gnawed on his lower lip like it'd done him some great personal disservice. He sighed and went back to looking out the window, impressed with himself that he'd managed to spoil the trip this quickly. Absentmindedly he apologized for having killed the buzz, his left thumb rubbing at the skin on his hand, scraping at calluses. The tension was palpable, and even when Dean rolled down the window on his side of the car, it didn't let up. It followed them all the way to work.

* * *

Adam sat next to Bobby, enjoying the quiet. Usually when he was with his brothers they tried to get him t talk as much as they could. They'd ask him questions that he couldn't just nod or shake his head in reply to. Adam hoped that this obsession of theirs to get him to become some sort of chatty cathy would go away eventually. But for the time being he would enjoy what relief he had while they were out.

"You sure you've never fished before, boy?" Bobby asked him suddenly, though Adam didn't find himself startled by the sound of his voice.

"Yep."

"You're holding that pole as if you have."

Adam shook his head, a smile tugging at his lips for all of a nanosecond before it hid beneath the surface again.

"My dad...took me once or twice...but I haven't fished since."

"Ah, sounds like John to take some time, and make sure you could, after all, even with all of the hunting he did while he raised Dean and Sam, he took the time to teach them too."

Adam remembered fishing with his dad was both calming and ridiculously entertaining. John Winchester could keep quiet for hours at a time, his mouth set into a rigid line on his face, no emotion seeping through. His thoughts were a mystery to the world around him. But then he would crack a grin and rile up his sons, distract them from the task at hand, lose any catch they might have hoped to reel in, but neither of them would care. Adam could feel the smile, drifting somewhere in his mouth, like a word he was tasting before he said it. He'd noticed that he had this sort of process with any feeling he had, or any thought, any reaction. It lingered in his mind, or sometimes in his stomach, throat, or mouth. Always he rode them out, wondering if maybe it was worth showing, or if it would be safer if he let it go.

He'd taken a psychology class once, as an elective while he was still in college. There'd been something in there about how people repress their feelings as a sort of defense mechanism. It's easier to avoid rejection, or confrontation, if one doesn't have any feelings at all. Adam wasn't scared of rejection. He might be scared of upsetting his older brothers, but that was a perfectly reasonable fear, Adam thought. He was no good to them if he wasn't strong enough, if he couldn't defend himself or kill the things that went bump in the night. Adam knew that Sam wouldn't just write him off, and even if Dean might listen to Sam occasionally, he knew that Dean was really the one calling the shots. If Adam pissed him off, he could ditch him in a heartbeat, and send him back to school, back to his crappy hole-in-the-wall life, and he probably wouldn't lose any sleep over it at all. So yeah, maybe Adam was a little scared of his big brother, but anyone that had seen Dean truly angry, like, I'm-going-to-beat-your-skull-in-with-this-blunt-object angry, tended to walk on egg-shells around him.

"What 'er ya thinking about so hard that's making all that smoke come out your ears?"

Adam rubbed his thumb over the smooth wood of the fishing pole's handle, his eyes trained on the lake.

"Nothing."

"I don't think I've seen anyone dwell so much on nothing."

"I'm ok, Bobby."

"I didn't say you weren't, but now that you mention it, _are_ you ok?"

Adam bit back a swear and avoided looking at Bobby. He'd said too much already, and the feeling of his throat making words to shoot out of his mouth like poorly aimed rounds was making him nauseous. There was something about his 'uncle' that made Adam feel like an open book. He could hide his thoughts and his reactions from his brothers just fine, but Bobby could see right through him like he was glass, and it scared the shit out of him. It frightened him almost as much as Dean's fury, and that was saying something. Adam wondered how incriminating it might be if he simply stood up and ran all the way back to the house. It was only ten miles, he could do it-

"Are you there, Adam?"

"I'm here," he replied quickly.

"Alright."

Adam barely heard anything Bobby said to him after that, and it seemed that the gruff old hunter figured this out eventually because he stopped trying to get him to talk. Adam felt a bit bad that he shut out Bobby, he liked him alright, but he didn't want him in his head. So he closed himself off and tried to salvage what he could from the afternoon, and slowly he could feel the easy calm return. Out of the several hours they were out there, sitting on the lake, they caught two fish, one for each of them. Adam wouldn't have minded if they hadn't caught any, for him it was more about the peace of sitting on the lake shore, and the silence.

* * *

Adam was more than ready for bed by the time that Bobby let him leave the dinner table. It was only ten in the evening, but the sun had set, and if he set his alarm for six, then it'd all even out. He kicked off his shoes, peeling off his socks shortly after. It had become a habit to shuck off his clothes and leave them in a heap in the same spot each night. The corner next to the door that wasn't occupied by the dresser had become the new home for his dirty clothes basket. Despite the dresser Bobby had told him he could use, Adam still stacked his clean clothes in a neatly folded pile next to his basket, force of habit.

He fell onto the edge of his bed and scuffed his callused heels on the wooden floor. Adam wormed his way under the still mussed covers, pulling them all the way to his chin as he sprawled out on the comfortably worn mattress. His breathing had just evened out when the phone rang downstairs. Bobby answered it soon enough and then Adam's ears wouldn't let him go back to sleep until he'd tuned into the conversation.

"...yeah, he just went upstairs to bed."

"Of course he was training, he went outside and worked himself ragged as usual right after you'd left-"

"...he's just fine...yeah, took him fishing this afternoon, you know, to give the boy a breather."

"well, he only went up a few minutes ago, I figure he's probably still awake if you wanna talk to him just go ahead and call his cell."

"Alright, if you boys need any help I'll be here."

Adam sighed, knowing he'd have to answer. He stared at his cell phone, which sat motionless on the nightstand a few inches away from his face. Sure enough it buzzed a few minutes later, and Adam reached out from under the covers for it. He flipped it open and dragged his arm back under the blanket, phone pressed to his ear.

"Hello?"

"Hey kid," Dean greeted, his voice sounding somewhat off, "how was training today?"

"It was ok, I'm getting steadier with the glock in my left hand."

"Good, good," there was something wrong with his voice. Adam was starting to feel the worry squirm in his stomach.

"So, um, you're holding up ok all alone with Bobby?"

"Yep."

The silence was oppressive over the phone, whereas in person it was usually a comfort that Adam liked to hold around himself like a shield. It was awkward and his brother sounded strained, almost hesitant. It was throwing him off because he wasn't sure if there was something he was supposed to say that he wasn't saying, or maybe something that his brother wasn't telling him. Either way it wasn't especially enjoyable.

"...well, it...it uh looks like we're going after an angry spirit, nothing too exciting, so you aren't missing anything, really," Dean offered, and Adam wondered if maybe that was Dean's way of cheering him up.

"Ok...um," Adam tried to work with the impulse instead of against it, don't over think-, "are you ok?"

"What? I'm fine, kid, this job is nothing to worry about-"

"It's not that, it's just...you sound...weird."

"Oh, cuddles, I'm just tired," Dean assured him, "it's been a long day of interviewing stupid people, and I swear, it's one of the most exhausting things you'll ever do on this job."

Adam laughed. Though he snatched it back and pushed it back down his throat after only a minute, it'd already escaped. Dean had heard it. Adam wasn't sure why that was so worrying, letting out a laugh. But when Dean spoke again, his voice didn't sound so weird, and in fact, he sounded a lot better, so Adam relaxed.

"Alright, kid, you wanna talk to geek-boy?"

"Um...sure."

Sam filled him in on the details of the case so far; all the men who had died so far had a history of severe alcohol abuse, but other than that had nothing in common. Somehow they were all dying by literally _drowning_ in their preferred poison. But, seeing as the people they'd interviewed thus far were being spectacularly unhelpful, or as Dean had put it, 'stupid', they'd probably be there for at least another two days. Then, it was Sam's turn, of course, to ask him about his day, and Adam attempted to give relatively the same answers. He did tell Sam about his physical conditioning as opposed to him telling Dean about weapons training. He'd managed to do a four minute mile that morning, and that was his best yet. Sam congratulated him and then said that he'd let him get some sleep. Adam nodded, only realizing a second later that Sam couldn't see him.

"Ok, goodnight," Adam yawned.

Adam could hear Sam's smile over the phone, and he wondered how anyone could emit that much joy so easily, "Goodnight, Adam."

"Tell Dean to play nice with the stupid people," he added last minute, a smile pressing into his lips too fast for him to stop, and he was too lazy to take it off.

"I will."

Adam snapped the phone shut and set it on the nightstand.


	6. Faultless, Perfect, Fanfuckingtastic

**NOTE:** DEAN HAS THE DUMB, HE CAN'T BRAIN TODAY.

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 6 - Faultless, Perfect, Fan-fucking-tastic

"...Sam, why is it that even old ladies from beyond the grave have a thing for you?"

"Shut up, Dean," Sam snapped.

Dean gave him a wolfish grin and flopped down onto his bed, "Whatever, crazy old lady from prohibition era is gone, and now my fellow alcohol loving citizens can be safe once more."

Sam rolled his eyes and sat down on his own bed. The hunt had lasted a little over a week, but really there had been no reason for it to have taken that long. Even after the third day the 'stupid' people weren't the problem. The trail was right in front of them, but every time that Sam tried to follow it, something would happen and Dean would take advantage of the distraction. It was like he didn't want to solve the case. But Sam knew that couldn't be true, Dean would never give up on a job, especially this one which was practically routine.

"Aren't you going to go to the bar, pick up some girl for the night?" Sam asked, "since the job's finished, we're going home tomorrow, right?"

Dean folded his arms behind his head, and stared at the ceiling, "What's got you itchin' to leave town so soon? Why don't we stay a few days?"

Sam puzzled over whether it was worth it to answer honestly or not. _Oh, I dunno Dean, cuz the kid's at home and we should go and pick him up for the next job so we can get on with our lives?_ Yeah, that would go over really well. His cell vibrated in his pocket, catching him off guard, and he jumped. Grumbling, he took out his phone to see who was calling. _Bobby_ the phone said.

"Hey Bobby," Sam answered, scratching at his forehead.

"Hey Sam, how's the job going?"

"Good, we just got back to the motel after salting and burning the corpse a few minutes ago."

Dean was glaring at him, and Sam knew then that he was avoiding going home. Maybe Sam hadn't been looking at his brother at the right moment to see the hand signals that would have probably told him to lie. But he wouldn't have anyways, so it was really a moot point.

"You boys sure took your sweet time with this case, any particular reason why?" Bobby asked, his voice holding a warning in it that Sam wasn't sure he wanted to ignore.

"Not really, Bobby," _don't let your voice crack, you haven't even done anything wrong!_, "things just came up and got in the way of us doing research."

"Such as?"

"Well..." Sam looked frantically to his brother for something he could use, but Dean had already given up on him apparently, he had his arms thrown over his face and was growling lowly like a displeased cat.

"I've got an idea, why don't you put your brother on the phone, Sam," Bobby told him, making it clear this was not a suggestion.

Sam was both relieved at having been let off the hook, and worried at how incredibly pissed Dean would be with him once he managed to get off the phone with Bobby. He handed the phone over to Dean, having to prod him in the arm with it to get him to take it.

"Yeah, Bobby, what's up?" Dean greeted, nonchalant, though he was giving Sam a greatly disappointed scowl.

A few minutes later and: "Um, well, when you put it that way..."

"...damnit, Bobby, what do you want me to do?"

"That's not my fault!"

"...it isn't!"

"Oh, so you want _me_ to fix it?"

"How am I supposed to do that?"

"Figure it out, yeah, that's _real_ stellar advice there, Bobby."

"...fuck, fine--"

"Bobby I said fine! We'll be home tomorrow!"

With that final word, Dean hung up and tossed the phone at Sam, beaning him in the head with it. Sam picked it up off of the floor where it had landed after hitting him and he clambered backwards on the bed so he could set it on the nightstand. When he glanced back at his brother he found him staring at the ceiling again, still giving the impression that if he had a tail it would be twitching side to side in agitation.

"So..."

"Don't even start, Sam."

"What did he say?"

"You know, I think I will go to the bar, seeing as it's our _last night in town_."

Dean sprung up from the bed and stormed out of the room, slamming the door dramatically behind him. Sam grumbled, _just great, and I have to be trapped in a car for most of the day with him tomorrow...

* * *

_

Adam knew that 'the calm before the storm' was just a turn-of-phrase. Something someone said, but didn't really mean because usually it was said in hindsight. Adam, however, was experiencing that calm and it had him kneeling in front of the toilet heaving and retching up nothing. His stomach was empty, not even having water to bring up. After a while his abdominal muscles were too sore and shredded and fatigued to carry on and he fell over onto the bathroom floor panting. He'd closed the door but he knew Bobby would come in eventually if he didn't go downstairs and eat something. _But I'm not hungry..._he thought in half-hearted frustration.

Ever since he'd heard the fight between Bobby and Dean last night, a crippling terror had been planted like a seed in his body, and it was slowly growing. It wasn't the type of fear that seized you right away and stole the air from your lungs, the feeling from your muscles. It was the silent kind, almost like polio, working its way through your body until eventually you were paralyzed from the neck down and you wore an iron lung, and you could feel anything anymore but that fear ricocheting around inside your skull like a bullet that would never break through.

Now it was nearing noon, and Adam hadn't started his conditioning, or his weapons training, because he'd been too dizzy to focus, too nauseous to stand, too weak to think about anything besides the fact that he wouldn't be able to see out of either eye for probably a week once Dean got home. His mind raced, trying to figure out what he should do. Should he train like everything was normal? Should he try to smile and laugh and be chipper? Should he talk and talk and talk about anything so long as he was saying something? What should he _do?_

He was so tired, so horribly tired, but if he fell asleep after being so sick he knew that Bobby would tear into Dean like it was all his fault, and it wasn't, it really wasn't. Adam was just a coward that overreacted, that was it. Somehow no matter what looping, winding route his thoughts took they always returned to the center of it all: Dean was mad, would be mad, would be mad at _him_. Even when he tracked down the reasoning, he tried to argue with himself while he laid there on the linoleum which was just as warm as the oven downstairs, it only kind of made sense.

_So Adam, why will Dean be mad at you?_

_Because I haven't been eating, or talking, and so Bobby yelled at Dean and blamed him._

_So he'll be mad at you for tattling but not tattling?_

_Yes._

_That doesn't make sense._

_Um..._

_You're always like that, Adam, he'll just be the same amount of worried as usual. If you eat something, talk a little bit with him, it'll all settle down._

_But he'll be mad!_

_Why?_

_Because!_

And that was how it went. Around and around, in circles that would make absolute sense to him until his mind shut him down again. Dean would be mad, mad at him, and he had to fix it, but he didn't know how. That's all he knew, and it's all he could think about, and he was developing a firm belief that gravity was trying to pull him through the bathroom floor and then through the foundation, and through the ground into the fiery center of the earth. But he had to get up, he had to, he couldn't be sick, if he was sick then Dean would be mad.

_Why would he be mad that you're sick?_

_Because! Shut up! You don't know anything!_

"Are you alright in there, boy?"

"I'm ok, Bobby," he answered, his voice just falling out from him after that. Why couldn't he make words?

"Yeah, you sound just peachy, I'm coming in-"

"No," the word tore out of him in an agonized moan, as if the very thought of Bobby opening that door would hurt like a punch to the stomach.

The door opened and then Bobby was kneeling next to him, shaking him, and Adam apologized, saying he would eat something, he could make it to the kitchen.

"Adam you are burning up we gotta you in bed and resting, you should not be up and moving around."

Adam wanted to scream and protest but he was fading fast. His stomach was retching again, and his throat hurt, nothing was coming out. He couldn't even say 'no', that wasn't a very hard word, was it? He had flashes of being pulled to his feet and dragged down the hall. But nothing seemed solid, sleep kept yanking him down, forcing him into an oblivion that seemed like it would do more harm than good. Something cold was put on his forehead, and it hurt him it was so cold. But it didn't hurt very long, because then he was asleep.

* * *

Dean stared at the familiar front of Bobby's house as they approached in the Impala. It'd taken them only a few hours to get there, but they'd left at ten, and now it was after noon. As soon as he stopped and parked the darn thing, Sam was out of the car and headed for the house. Dean was a bit slower on the uptake, to the point of sitting in the car a few more minutes before he could make himself move. They'd gotten a call from Bobby about an hour or two into their trip, saying they better hurry up, and could they stop by the grocery store and get some chicken & stars and a few pedia-pops. Apparently Adam had been dizzy and faint most the morning and then spent an hour in the bathroom being violently sick. After that he'd passed out and Bobby had put him into bed with a bag of ice wrapped in a towel or two on his forehead.

Dean licked at his bottom lip and ran his hands through his hair a few times. He shoved open the car door and then shut it with just as little care before stalking up to the house and letting himself in. Bobby was in the kitchen, already heating up one of the cans of soup they'd brought. He told Dean to take the water bottle on the counter up to Adam, with no sign of anger in his voice. He didn't care if Dean was the worst brother ever at the moment because he was focused on taking care of the malnourished runt upstairs. Dean snatched the bottle off the counter and did as instructed, climbing the stairs two at a time.

The door to Adam's room was open, and Dean slipped in, finding Sam sitting on the bed next to Adam who was lying under the covers sucking on a fresh pedia-pop. He was so sickly and inherently boy-ish that he looked like he was twelve. Dean couldn't meet his eyes, but he did wander over to the side Sam had perched himself on and handed Adam the water bottle as he'd been told to. Adam took it and immediately started drinking from it. His face was blank as usual, no hint of feeling to be found.

"So, are you feeling any better?" he asked lamely, trying to put his usual nonchalant and immature attitude into his words.

"Yeah, I think Bobby is just fussing now, I really want to get outside and train some more."

Sam scowled at him and Dean figured that the kid was lying to him. He clambered onto the bed and propped himself up on his knees and leant over to put a hand on his forehead. Adam was still burning up and slicked with sweat. Even if Dean hadn't felt for a temperature he could tell by looking at Adam's glazed over eyes and paler than usual skin that he wasn't feeling too great.

"You done lying now, kid?"

"Yessir."

Dean ignored the raised eyebrows and the knowing look Sam was sending him. He was thirty-one, but even saying it in his head didn't make him feel as old as Adam telling him the same thing that he said to their dad all through his childhood. Dean yanked off his shoes and folded his legs beneath him, telling Sam to go and get his laptop out of the car and bring it up here. After Sam had left, Adam seemed to shrink into himself even more. Dean wanted to hit something he was so mad at himself. Unlike Adam, Dean supposed that he couldn't hide what he was feeling by the way that Adam was quickly disappearing inside his head.

"Are you in there, cuddles?" Dean asked him, grabbing at one of the kid's feet and shaking it playfully under the blankets.

"Yeah."

Adam fisted his left hand in the blankets and went back to working on that pedia-pop. His face was blank again but he seemed to be thinking hard about something so Dean let him be. Eventually Adam looked up at him, and Dean wondered if this was actually a good sign.

"I don't think...it's your fault that I'm messed up," Adam chomped off a whole section of his popsicle and then cringed briefly at the cold, "I'll get over it eventually."

Dean remembered Sammy saying almost exactly the same thing a week ago.

"That's what Sam said, you know, but I can't believe it if this has happened twice in a row," Dean hoped that Sam's 'chick flick moment' sensors would inform him to stay downstairs a while longer, "it's gotta be something that I'm doing..."

Adam wasn't looking at him anymore, and was instead staring at the wall, wolfing down that popsicle so fast he was bound to get a brain freeze in a few minutes.

"Adam," Dean tried, putting on his 'I'm a good guy, really' voice he usually reserved for small kids, "you can tell me whatever it is, I'm a big boy, I can take it."

Dean thought that maybe he should move up the bed and sit next to him, but then realized that might just scare him more so he stayed put. He popped his knuckles and fidgeted with the holes in his jeans.

"You just..." Adam started, snapping Dean out of his thoughts, "you get so..."

Adam shook his head again, as if he had it all wrong. _Damnit,_ Dean thought. If he lost momentum like this now he'd never tell him.

"What?"

"...mad."

Dean fumbled, "what?"

"You know, it's, I'm probably just-"

"No, what did you say? I'm old you know, the hearing's going."

"You just get so...mad, you know? It's...scarier than that ghoul was, that killed my mom. I'd just, I think I'd rather take on a horde of those, alone, then you when you're really angry," Adam confessed.

Well...that was...not entirely unexpected, but somehow it still hit him like a mortar round. Being terrifying to the baddies you were hunting was one thing, but to your little brothers was another. That wasn't cool. It made him feel like he wasn't doing his job right, as their big brother. He was supposed to protect them, not give them nightmares. Unless it was about the water fountain running out of water because they'd drank too much from it and now all the whales would die. That was just funny.

"...I guess it's time for me to enroll in anger management, then, huh?"

"No, it's ok, I mean, Sam's ok, right? I'll be ok too, you'll see," Adam assured him, his feeling-less mask cracked wide enough that Dean could see the apology plain and clear on his face.

They were both so sure that it was nothing of Dean's doing, he was faultless, and it was them that needed fixing. It was simultaneously flattering and infuriating.

"What is with you guys?!" Dean blurted, unable to hold it in anymore, "You think I'm so perfect that I couldn't possibly be the one screwing up in this equation?"

Adam winced, and Dean realized he'd already started yelling, and they'd only been talking for about ten minutes or so. He forced himself to calm down, taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly. He could do this, he could be calm and...not...angry.

"No, fuck this calm and nice shit," Dean grouched, "you know, you're right, my little brothers just grew up to be pussies somehow, how'd I let that happen?"

Adam told him automatically that he hadn't let it happen, it wasn't his fault, they'd get better, it was ok. Dean grumbled all the same, and soon enough Sam's sensors had told him that the attempted chick flick moment had gone to shit and it was time for him to return.

Sam ambled into the room with his laptop tucked under one arm and a breakfast tray in the other on which he was balancing a bowl of chicken & stars soup. Dean steadied it, taking it from Sam and setting it over Adam's lap, letting him situate it the way he wanted. He was still a little annoyed, but he chose to focus on the reason he'd made Sam go and get his laptop out of the car. Training that Adam could actually do while he was bedridden. How to tell what could be a job and what obviously wasn't...

Within the hour they were back to some semblance of normal: Sam was the understanding, sentimental geek-boy, Dean was the big-bad-evil douche bag, and Adam was emotionless, twitchy and quiet. One big happy family.


	7. Fun Stealer

Family Business

Chapter 7 - Fun Stealer

"You alright, kid?"

Adam glanced up from his breakfast plate. He felt like a wasteful cow for eating two helpings of french toast, scrambled eggs, and bacon. But that was ok, because they were hitting the road today. He was getting in the car with his big brothers and he was going to help them hunt something. Every once in a while he'd been smiling slightly, unable to keep the grin hiding in his mouth, but he'd always pulled it back in. He swallowed his latest mouthful of food and fought off the nausea as he looked at his big brother.

"What?"

"You're just kinda...off," Dean informed him, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

Adam looked down at his plate which was now empty. He wondered how much more he could eat without throwing it up. He could probably eat one more slice of french toast an a few more strips of bacon. He asked Bobby for just that and was thrilled at the approving look Bobby gave him.

"What do you mean?" Adam asked, plucking a fresh strip of bacon off his plate after Bobby had returned it to him.

"This is your third helping of breakfast, you never eat this much," Dean pointed out.

"But I thought you wanted me to eat more..." Adam stopped with the next bit of bacon halfway to his mouth.

"Well yeah, but we've been trying to get you to eat more all summer long and you've pretty much ignored us, so what brought on the change?"

Adam felt it was safe to finish eating his third serving and he drank down the tall glass of orange juice that Bobby must have refilled a minute ago. He shook his head and combed his hair forward with his fingernails.

"Um," tell the truth? Why not..."I finally get to go with you guys today...I figure everyone will be happier if I'm not fainting halfway through the day."

"Yeah, we would be," Sam said slowly, "especially since we'll be needing you working."

Adam nodded, finding it harder and harder to conceal his excitement. But as usual, he managed. He would find a way to be of use to them, and then maybe they would let him stay. The very thought of being able to stay with them, the assurance that he would not be left behind or kicked out made him roll his lips inward so he could bite them hard enough to hold in a massive grin.

"Why don't you head upstairs and start getting your things together?" Sam suggested, having to nudge him in the elbow to with his fork to get his attention.

"Ok," Adam kept himself calm and rose casually from his chair, taking his plate over to the sink to wash it.

"You're always doing these dishes, boy, just go on," Bobby shooed him.

Adam nodded, though he wasn't sure he liked the idea of not cleaning up after himself. He left the room, making his way up the stairs and to the room he'd been occupying all summer. Once inside his room, with the door closed, he let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. With none of his family watching, hidden away in his room, he let a huge smile light up his face, and he allowed himself a minute to let out all the excitement and joy he'd been containing all morning. Afterwards he was somewhat tired, but his face settled back into its usual impassive state easier, and he started packing.

* * *

It had been two weeks since Adam had gotten sick and Dean had sent them back to square one on the 'fix Adam' project. Whereas Bobby had been miffed that Dean had ultimately reinforced Adam's beliefs regarding his own faults, Sam was displeased that Dean had tried to have the conversation at all. "He'll get better on his own, confronting him about it will just make it worse!" Sam had proclaimed exasperatedly. Dean had decided that he no longer cared so long as the kid didn't shoot one of them instead of whatever they were hunting.

...well, he cared a lot less. He no longer felt like a horrible brother, and worried about the runt's psyche every few minutes. But he did still notice the small, almost imperceptible flinches and cringes whenever he looked at the kid wrong. Ironically, those glimpses of the fear that Adam felt towards him just annoyed him and sparked his temper, which scared him more. It was a vicious cycle that Dean could feel himself slipping into rather easily, and it felt so familiar that sometimes he started seeing a younger Sam in Adam's place, a Sam that was twitchy, snot nosed, and all skinny limbs and elbows. Sam didn't think twice about telling him to shut up nowadays, but if he had a problem with him he would never tell him, he'd sit there and brood and stare pensively out the window. Maybe his constipation over telling him what it was that Dean did that bothered him had started out with him being spacey and scared like Adam was now.

Dean was checking to make sure he had all of his things packed and tossed into the trunk of the car just then, and he was glad to finally be heading out. He loved Bobby like a son was supposed to love his father, but he was so used to wandering all over the country hunting it felt inherently wrong to stay in one place for more than a week or two. The hunt they'd finished recently had been such a tease that he hadn't wanted to return to Bobby's and keep up the last dregs of Adam's necessary training. But he had anyways, and the rest was history. Now they were ready to go, and he couldn't wait.

Adam shuffled out first, throwing his duffel into the trunk before shoving his hands into his jeans pockets. Reflexively, as if Dean had already smacked him, he yanked his hands back out of his pockets and shook them a few times when he tried to run them through his hair. Dean rolled his eyes and kicked the kid's shin.

"You all there, cuddles?"

"Yep," he answered, staring back at the house blankly, though Dean could see a hint of desperation in the way he kept shaking his hands as if they were wet.

Sam emerged after a few minutes of Adam's plaintive staring, Bobby coming out after him. Sam dropped his things in the trunk as well and ruffled Adam's hair affectionately. He turned back around and thanked Bobby for letting them stay there for so long, and Bobby waved him off as if he were crazy.

"Alright Bobby, we'll call ya if we run into something we can't handle," Dean told him, slamming the trunk closed and tossing the keys to the impala between his hands.

"And you know, to check in and let me know you boys aren't lying dead in a ditch somewhere, that would be good too," Bobby teased, "ya idjit."

Dean shook his head, smirking as he fell into the driver's seat. Sam was in the passenger seat and Adam in the back, already lying down and buckled in. Soon the music was on and Bobby's house was squatting in the rear view mirror. It took about twenty minutes to track down the freeway, but once they were on they were weaving between cars through mid afternoon traffic about thirty miles over the speed limit. ACDC was blaring out the rolled down windows and he had his left elbow propped up in the car window, his hand tapping the rhythm of the song on the roof while he steered with his right wrist.

"Dean, do you have any idea where we're headed?" Sam asked.

"Sammy, we just got on the road, I have no clue."

"How bout west?" Sam offered.

Dean nodded, "Sounds good."

All Dean wanted was to find his way to one of those strips of interstate where all he could see were expanses of nothing on either side of the road, and he could push a hundred miles an hour because no po-po's hung out that far from civilization. Even if they did, they were too lazy to stop him. It only took them about two hours to get onto such a stretch of asphalt and by that time he could hear the sleepy snuffling of Adam in the backseat. Sam wasn't looking all that awake either, and Dean figured that it wouldn't be that long before he was the only one awake. He couldn't have that. He cranked the music up so loud it wrapped around him like a heavy thrum of a blanket. Sam jumped and glowered at him, and Adam suddenly appeared, sitting up halfway, with his left arm slung over the front seat.

Adam had looked startled for only a few seconds before he'd restored his face to a blank slate as he did with anything that could possibly be interpreted as feeling. You had to be a quick read to be able to catch the emotions flying across Adam's face whenever they surfaced because they never lasted long. Dean wondered how long it would be before Adam could hold it all back and never show anything at all, not even a glimpse.

* * *

It was late afternoon when they stopped, and Adam was woken up by the music turning off and the car doors slamming shut. A feeling of deja-vu crawled over his skin when he remembered having arrived at Bobby's the same way. They were stopped outside a hole in the wall diner, and when Adam looked around it found nothing else but dirt roads, and a gas station a ways off. The parking lot itself was unpaved and dusty, and Adam hurried to catch up with his brothers, not wanting to be left outside by himself. Inside, the small building was well populated with a crowd mixed with travelers and well acquainted locals. And when they wandered in a harried waitress quickly seated them in a booth she had to bus first. She took their orders for drinks with the bucketful of dirty dishes propped on her hip. She was a cute, girl-next-door type with child bearing hips and a short bob of mousy brown hair. Naturally Dean gave her a wink and a smirk. She swooned slightly and scampered off to get them their drinks.

The menu was at the end of the table next to the salt and pepper shaker and Sam and Dean traded it back and forth. Dean only had to make sure they had both bacon, and cheeseburgers. It didn't matter if the two combined was actually on the menu, he could always just flirt his way into getting them to make one for him. After Sam was done looking it over he handed it to Adam who set it down at the end of the table in its original place. Sam gave him a 'look', and Adam fiddled with his silverware.

"Adam, at least look to see if there's anything you want," Sam said, snagging the menu back.

Adam shook his head, "But I'm not hungry."

"You haven't eaten since this morning."

"I don't want to order something," he protested again, though his voice wasn't all that firm, it was meek and mild, and completely unimposing.

As the waitress was approaching with two beers for his brothers and a glass of water for him, Adam was confused when Dean backed him up. But there was something in his voice that made it sound like a bad thing. The way Dean's eyes rolled at Sam and his lips curled in a sneer, put him on edge. As soon as the glass of water was put in front of him, and a straw offered, Adam took it, ripped off the paper wrapper and stuck the straw into the glass. He latched onto it and sucked down a quarter of the glass's contents.

"So, what have you all decided on?" the waitress asked, her words sugary sweet and laced with the familiar tone that all waitresses and waiters seemed to possess.

"I'll have a bacon cheeseburger and a slice of cherry pie," it was impressive how Dean managed to avoid laughing at the end, and instead kept his voice smooth, his smirk intact.

Sam rolled his eyes at his brother and ordered a club sandwich and an extra side of fries. Then, when the waitress turned expectantly to him he shook his head and told her he didn't want anything. Sam told him firmly that he should order something, or he'd pick something out for him, he needed to eat on a more regular basis. Then Dean fired back with not having the funds to pay for food that wouldn't get eaten, but somehow he managed to keep his game face on and make Sam look stupid. Adam felt bad for the girl who was caught in the crossfire, her little notepad perched in her hands with the pen paused, waiting or an answer. Her eyes flitted back and forth between Sam and Dean, unsure if their 'tiff' would be solved soon or if she should give them a minute.

Somewhere along the line, Dean's act slipped, and the asshole beneath shined through. The flustered girl standing next to their table wrinkled her nose and her eyes rested once more on Adam, who was fidgeting with his silverware, wishing it wasn't such a big deal that he wasn't hungry. If most people said they weren't hungry, then others wouldn't really mind, but with his brothers and Bobby, it was as if he'd said he just didn't feel like breathing for the time being.

"Sweetie, I'll just bring out some ice cream, on the house, alright?" she told him, and Adam tried to tell her that he didn't want it, but soon she had disappeared towards the kitchen, giving Dean a disgusted look as she left.

At least it was free, that wouldn't make Dean too mad. He looked up at him and found him just short of snarling. What did he do? He'd tried to tell her, and he'd told Sam, he didn't want anything. He wasn't hungry, it was a waste of food and of money. But somehow, Dean was angry.

"_Sweetie_, you just stole my fun."

"What?" Adam was so confused it hurt.

Sam was laughing in a 'serves you right' sort of way. It took a moment for Adam to realize that he'd inadvertently made the cute waitress see Dean in a lesser light and now it was very likely that he wouldn't get laid. Adam kept his eyes from rolling and instead he stared at the tabletop.

When their food came, Adam made himself pick at his ice cream. It was the watery kind that only tasted like it _might_ have been the flavor its claimed to be, and in a past life at that. But he ate mot of it and ignored the way it made his stomach feel slimy inside and his tongue feel like sand paper. They paid for the food and Dean didn't leave a tip, feeling sulky and petulant because someone had managed to divert female attention away from him. Sam left one for him, scowling at Dean's behavior.

Adam followed them to the car, returning to the back seat. He wasn't allowed to sleep for the rest of the time they were on the road, however, because Dean lured him into a set up for teasing, and that continued on for the next several hours.


	8. Don't Let Him Kill

**NOTE: **This was...unexpectedly long...enjoy? :D

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 8 - Don't Let Him Kill

Adam was huddled up on the edge of the bed, facing the bathroom door. He'd wanted to sleep on the floor, but Sam wouldn't have it. Dean had claimed one of the beds and said that Sam and Adam would have to share the other one because as the oldest, Dean had dibs on having a bed to himself. Sam and him had bickered over the issue for about an hour while Adam had curled himself up on the floor. Then, arms had lifted him up and dropped him on the bed, yanking down the blankets and covering him up. He'd caught only a flash of Dean's leather jacket before the bathroom door had closed.

Now it was morning, and Adam was avoiding the crazy long limbs of Sam who'd taken up most of the bed. He trained his eyelids closed so that he could concentrate on fighting of his usual morning arousal. He was glad he'd been lying on his side so he hadn't pitched a tent in the blanket. Slowly but surely, his problem died down and he could make himself loll onto his back and sit up. He'd fallen asleep in his clothes, and now he felt grungy and recycled.

Adam looked around and saw neither of his brothers were there. He couldn't hear anyone in the bathroom, and when he scurried over to the motel window and peered out he couldn't see the Impala anywhere. His hand was on the doorknob in a second, about to yank the door open so he could go bolting across the pavement bare footed, when his eyes saw the note taped to the door.

_Went to get breakfast and coffee, get on Sam's laptop and find us a case._

"Find a case..." Adam wondered idly why the words sounded so excitable, even to his own ears.

Good, he could be of use, he could do something. He shuffled over to the table in the corner of the room where Sam's laptop rested. After fidgeting with the cables and cords, he got the thing up and running. He surfed around on the internet, scanning through news articles from local papers of the states around them first. Anything that was making national news would already be infested with feds, and with his brothers highly sought after by the law, that wasn't a good idea. Even if they were already considered deceased, their faces were posted on every federal agency's wall as a sort of ghost story in itself.

There were a few maybes, and some that looked like they could be safe bets, but Adam bookmarked and took notes on each potential job he found. He'd peeled a fresh notebook out of his backpack and started comparing the would-be hunts in lists of details, and checking more thoroughly for information on each of them. In the end he came up with something that looked like a werewolf problem, another that was probably a haunting, and a possibility of mass corpse-turned-zombie resurrection. A lot of the 'maybe's he'd found were more small time things like angry spirits, or poltergeists. He kept those out too, looking into them more, but highlighted the bigger game. He wasn't sure what his brothers would want to go after so he tried to find as many options as he could.

Adam was jotting down the details of a job located a bit farther north when the lock on the front door tumbled, and his brothers came in with coffee and bags from the nearby MacDonald's. He finished his thought, before capping his pen and looking up at his brothers. Sam handed him some hash-browns and Dean snatched up Adam's notes, looking over them in disbelief.

"I thought it was just Sam that was so god damn organized, but maybe it's a college thing," Dean shook his head, "they lock you up in rooms and brain wash you for hours until all you want to do is put bullets next to your sentences and highlight everything in pink and yellow."

Adam was somewhat offended, but he wanted to laugh too. He forced himself to eat his hash-browns instead. Dean read some of his notes aloud, quoting him and screwing up his face in confusion. Eventually he handed the information over to Sam and said 'college boy, make sense of this.' Sam laughed at him and read through it, nodding and clearly grasping everything that had been written down.

"These are great, Adam," Sam told him appreciatively.

Dean scoffed, having fallen back onto one of the beds lazily, "They're confusing, I mean, what kind of person uses words like 'convolute' and 'disparity' in their notes?"

Sam ignored him and started summarizing the information that Adam had gathered for Dean so that he wouldn't have to know the meanings behind the big words on paper. As Adam had expected, Dean was torn between a zombie massacre and werewolf hunting. But while Adam surveyed the debate between his brothers, he noticed it took a confusing and vague turn which veered them away from werewolf hunting and more onto zombie slaying. He heard a name, 'Madison' get mentioned, but it could have just as easily been 'Megan' or 'Madelaine' too, so he didn't bother trying to remember. Plus, he had no want to try and ask Sam about it, judging by the neutral and uninformative expression he now wore like a shield.

"Alright, zombies it is, let's get a move on," Dean rose from the bed, gathering his things and tossing them into his bag.

Adam let Sam pack up his laptop, and instead started straightening the bed, making it up and throwing away their breakfast trash.

"Kid, they have room service for a reason, let them clean it up."

Adam looked up from the bed he was making, and saw Dean staring at him with a half hearted 'what the fuck?' look. He stopped himself from cleaning further and went to grab his backpack, putting his notebook away along with his highlighters and pens. He was startled when Dean reached around him and grabbed the notebook out of his bag. Then he turned around and pestered Sam.

"Sammy, you still have a dictionary in your bag?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Cuz you don't have to go to college to be smart, and I can read these notes if I want to," Dean snapped childishly. He tromped out of the room like a petulant whirlwind as soon as he had the dictionary in hand.

Adam and Sam watched him go, and while Adam was confused and worried about the quality of his information, Sam just looked exasperated. Together they wandered out, and Adam watched as his older brother flicked the hotel room keys onto the pavement, not bothering to head to the lobby to turn them in. When they fell into their usual places in the car, Dean had the dictionary open and was looking back and forth between it and Adam's notes.

"Disparity means 'difference'? Are you kidding me? Then why wouldn't you just use difference?"

Sam sighed and said, "Because some people have a bigger vocabulary than that and happen to use a different word for something every now and then."

"Don't you mean a 'disparit' word, Sammy?"

"Dean, 'disparit' isn't a word."

"Whatever, and how does using 'convoluted' make any sense? It means folded!"

"Its connotative meaning is 'skewed' or fuzzy, like if a piece of evidence just doesn't seem right."

"That's retarded."

Sam didn't press after that and took the dictionary and notes away from Dean while he pulled the impala out of the motel parking lot and back onto the road. They were headed towards some town in Utah that had a population of five thousand or less. They'd stopped just under a hundred miles into Colorado, flirting with the border it shared with Wyoming, and it was looking like it would only be half a day's drive to the town with the zombie army.

Adam's attempts to sleep during the trip were foiled again by an intensive pop quiz on how to kill a zombie, or merely fend one off. Though Dean started it, Sam joined the fray and added in more specific questions that Adam admittedly had trouble answering. He guessed that Sam had helped in the sporadic study session to try and make Dean look like less of a drill sergeant, but Adam wished he hadn't, so that he could just sleep.

* * *

Once they arrived in town, Adam was unceremoniously ditched at the one and only graveyard around while his brothers went to the police department. It was almost six in the evening and they were going to do research before they even thought about looking for a motel. He was instructed to take a look around for any signs of actual grave desecration and if so, how much. If at all possible he should look for a grounds keeper and see if he could feel him out as the necromancer they were after.

Adam shuffled through the cemetery, finding it to be rather antique in its headstones. It even had sectioned off family plots, and a few tombs scattered about. It didn't really give the impression over being massively disturbed by a zombie hungry necromancer. Adam honestly felt rather at peace there, though that might just be due to the face that he was away from his older brothers for more than a few minutes. Thinking of his face as a tightly locked door with stiffened, stubborn hinges, Adam imagined loosening it, opening the door a crack. As he stuttered around the graves, inspecting them closely, one by one, he let any thoughts or feelings he had drift openly through the crack in the door. He'd made a habit of doing this when he was away from his brothers and Bobby. He was under the distinct impression that it was the only thing keeping him sane anymore.

As he was tracing the headstone and staring carefully at the grass in front of it, Adam noticed someone join him. He turned around, still squatting close to the ground, and saw a solid black puppy that didn't even come up to his knees, with floppy ears and huge paws, it's only flaw was a crink in its tail. It wasn't big enough yet to have any details that might tell Adam what breed it was, but what he did know was it was insanely cute. He reached out a hand to it, and as trusting and gentle as any puppy it approached him and sniffed and licked his hand. Then it yipped, just once, and snuggled up at his feet. Adam smiled, and scooped up the little thing in his arms and had the crazy notion that maybe he would keep it. But like smack to the face came the multitude of different ways Dean could react, all of them bad.

What was a puppy doing in the middle of a graveyard, anyways?

"Oy, you lookin' to keep that runt?" A voice called to him, and Adam sprung up from his crouch, a hand on the gun tucked into the back of his pants, hidden by his jacket.

A plain looking man, old and gruff, stood a few feet off. There was a tall, marble colored great dane standing at his side, and a pack of lolling puppies at the dog's feet. The puppies were all either white, or black or some strange mix of both, and all of them too cute to bare. Adam looked down at the puppy in his arms and set it on the ground.

"How much would you be lookin' for?" Adam asked back, scolding himself for getting so hopeful. Dean would surely tell him no.

"Nothin', I can't dream of chargin' ya anything, they were born three weeks ago, and haven't been looked at by a vet, if you want it, you keep it. One less pup for me to keep track of," the man told him.

Adam bit his lip and resisted, "I might come back for him, I was actually looking for the grounds keeper for this place, are you him?"

"That I am, whatdya need me for?"

"I'd been hearing about all the vandalism going on around here, the grave desecrations, and I was wondering if it was true."

The old man scratched at his stubble lined jaw, and then at his beer belly before he answered, looking to the right, "Yeah, it's true. The stupid kids around here thinking it's the most fun in the world to disrespect the dead. But what you wanting to know, for?"

"Well," Adam started, a lie coming to him within seconds, "I just moved here, and heard about the problems at church, and thought that maybe if I could get some testimonials from you, maybe some pictures of the place, I could write an article and persuade the church board to have a fund raiser to renovate the cemetery."

"That would be very much appreciated, son," the grounds keeper told him with a hopeful grin, "ya don't know how many times I've tried for something similar in this town. Seems like all the living care about is themselves and not how their loved ones are faring."

"I know what you mean," Adam agreed, holding out a hand to the man, "my name's Matthew Webber, and you are?"

"Calvin Kirkwood," he replied, shaking Adam's hand firmly, "now, come on back to my cabin and we can talk about this article of yours over some whiskey."

Adam was about to nod when his phone buzzed in his pocket and he apologized, "Sorry, just give me a second would you?"

"Of course," Calvin carried on, his pack of dogs following him a ways off, as he polished the headstones with a rag he pulled out of his pocket.

Adam took his phone out of his pocket and flipped it open, "Hello."

"Looks like we're gonna be up to our eyeballs in zombie fightin'," Dean's voice informed him, "at least twelve graves have been dug up in the past four months."

"Well, I talked to the grounds keeper, his name's Calvin Kirkwood, and he doesn't really seem that bad."

"And the graves themselves? How's the place lookin'?"

"Whoever decided to desecrate the place did it pretty efficiently, the graves I came across so far that have been dug up don't really look like it. The grass has grown back pretty well, and it doesn't appear any less healthy than the grass around it so whatever necromancer did this knew how to cover his tracks," Adam answered.

"Great, well-"

"Oh, and Calvin invited me back to his place to talk about the 'article' I'm writing about the cemetery to try and persuade a church to clean up the place, should I go and take a look around or do you want to pick me up now?"

"What's your alias?"

"Matthew Webber."

"Well, Matty," Dean cooed, "remember that you _always_ have the right to say no, a bad touch is a bad touch."

"Ok."

"Good, we'll go get a room at the motel then and try to see if there's any connection between the newly undead. Call us when you're ready to be picked up."

"Will do."

Dean hung up and Adam did too, slipping his cell back into his pocket. He looked around for Calvin and found him only a few plots away. He jogged over to him and told him that was his roommate seeing how the interview was going. Calvin nodded and led him back to his modest cabin that was a few minutes walk away from where the graves stopped. It was small and clearly meant for one person. It had a tiny bathroom, and a sad excuse for a kitchen. There was no bed or other room, but there was a couch and a tv, and that's where they settled. The mama great dane fell down onto the floor near the television and her puppies occupied themselves with bounding around the room, and wrestling with each other.

"So, Calvin," Adam started genially, "how long have you been taking care of the place?"

"Oh, gee, it's been something like thirty years, now?" the ol' codger guessed, pouring them each a glass of dark amber. Adam had never drank before and he didn't want to start now. But Calvin had been so agreeable he felt like it would be an insult if he refused the offer.

"That's pretty impressive, you must really care about this cemetery to stick with it so long," Adam acknowledged, holding his glass and gazing into it wearily like the liquor might reach out and strangle him.

"Yeah, I do," Calvin took a long sip of whiskey and smiled fondly, "ever since my lovely Myra passed, no one really understood what it was like, being so alone, so cut off. I tried to fit back in, but, really, it was the solitude, and the chore of keeping the cemetery going that saved me."

Adam knew he shouldn't be he felt an inexplicable kinship to the man, and he felt himself blurt, "I know exactly what you mean."

"And who have you lost already, son?" Calvin's eyebrows furrowed and his face creased in sympathy.

"My mother, and my father," he admitted painfully.

"I am so sorry to hear that, Matthew."

Adam took the plunge and raised the glass to his lips, taking a gulp of the drink. He nearly choked on it, pounding on his chest. The liquid seared his throat and made his eyes water. He folded over himself and set the drink down onto the coffee table. Calvin patted his shoulder and laughed good naturedly. When he asked if he'd ever drank before, Adam told the truth, he hadn't.

"Well then I think one glass will be enough for you, this is strong stuff," Calvin told him, and Adam inwardly sighed with relief.

Over the next hour, Adam discovered that over the years there'd been plenty of drug up graves, but they were so spread out that the police hardly ever looked into it. Calvin confessed that while he'd been fairly vigilant in his earlier years, a car wreck that ruined his knee made it hard to walk for long, and he'd grown less watchful over time. He told Adam that he truthfully didn't know how many of the bodies buried in the graveyard were still there, at the rate at which people were dug up.

"Well, I think that's enough information for the time being, Calvin," Adam told him, "thank you so much for your cooperation."

"Oh, it was nothing, son."

Calvin stood up and walked with him out the door, whistling for the dogs to follow. It was getting dark out, and Adam was weary about walking around in the cemetery alone with Calvin, as nice as he was. Adam took out his cell and dialed Dean's number. When he picked up Adam told him he was ready to go, and with that, Dean was on his way.

Hesitantly, Adam allowed Calvin to lead him through the graveyard and the evening air, back towards the road. The same puppy from earlier was trotting obediently at his heels, and Adam tried to make himself detach from it. He tried not to imagine how nice it would be to have someone other than his brothers to have companionship with, even if it was just a dog. Adam had never had a dog before, or even a pet. His mom wasn't the type to have pets. He suspected his brother wasn't either, and his felt his shoulders droop. They reached the road easily enough and the impala was sitting on the road waiting for him.

"Are you sure you don't want that pup, son?" Calvin asked him. Eyeing the pup at Adam's feet.

The hope that swelled in his chest burned him it was so strong. He picked up the little thing and curled it up in his arms, facing Calvin. Nervously he looked back towards the impala and thought he might as well try.

"I'll be right back if I can't, lemme just ask my roommate, I dunno if he'd be ok with having a dog," Adam mumbled nervously.

"Matty!" Dean's voice shouted from the car, and Adam jumped when he heard the car door creak open.

"It was nice to meet you, Calvin!" Adam told him in a hurry, walking quickly over to the car.

As Adam approached he could see Dean's eyes searching him, trying to hone in one whatever it was that Adam was carrying. The puppy probably was hard to see in the dark. But once he was standing in front of Dean avoiding his eyes, he heard Dean groan.

"No."

"But-"

"We can't afford a dog."

"It's free, Calvin lemme have it, it's not even a month old, so he's giving 'em away for free," Adam said, lamely.

"We can't afford to feed it or anything, and I do not want that thing making a mess in my car."

"I'll hold him the whole time, so that if he makes a mess it'll be on me, and if he ever did anything to the impala I'd fix it, or pay for it, or anything!"

"No, Adam," Dean commanded firmly.

"But normal hunters have hunting dogs, why can't I have one?"

"Because we don't hunt ducks or foxes, or whatever it is hunting dogs are normally used for."

Adam held the puppy protectively, "I'm keeping him."

"No, you're not."

"If it's just about the impala then I'll walk to the motel," Adam offered, already turning towards the road and heading for town.

"You're not keeping it!" Dean shouted after him, but Adam ignored him.

Inside he was shaking and sick and scared as hell, but he wasn't going to give up on this one. Adam didn't care if Dean thought he was annoying or hated him, or didn't want him as a brother, but he had to have something. Dogs were so senseless they loved their masters no matter what, and Adam needed that. He needed something unconditional, that would like him even if he used big words, even if he didn't talk or eat enough or have feelings like normal people.

Adam didn't make it very far before angry footsteps pounded after him and hand landed on his shoulder, spinning him around. This entire time the puppy had not made one noise, it had snuggled against him and been good. He hadn't even had to say anything. When Dean turned him around and glared at him as if he were the most troublesome thing in the world, the puppy trembled in his arms and buried its muzzle against his chest.

"If it uses my baby as a toilet, I will punt it into next week," Dean growled, his tensed jaw softening only barely when he looked down at it.

"Ok," Adam nodded, a genuine smile warming his whole face, "thank you Dean."

Dean faltered at Adam's smile and turned away quickly, stalking back towards the impala. Adam went after him and was about to fall into the backseat when Dean stopped him.

"Just get in front, Sam's back at the motel."

Adam stumbled around to the front door and clambered into the passenger seat. He buckled himself in and set the puppy down in his lap. It yawned and curled up against him. Adam beamed down at the little guy, starting to think of names for him. Jack? No. Spot? No, that seemed silly because he was one whole color. Adam noticed him jump when the music suddenly blared, he raised his little puppy head and stared at Dean, and then settled down again. Adam laughed shortly, he already couldn't rip the smile off his face, so he restrained himself from laughing too much.

"You gonna name it?"

"I'm trying to think of names right now," Adam admitted, "think of boy names."

"Dean," he fired off automatically.

Adam laughed again, and he clapped a hand over his mouth. He had to get a grip. He breathed in and out deeply against his sweating palm.

"Don't," Dean ordered, shaking him.

Adam glanced at him, and he took his hand off of his mouth, "What?"

"Don't go away like that."

That voice sounded too helpless to belong to Dean, and it scared him. Dean's hand was still on his shoulder and it was gripping at his jacket. What was he talking about? Go away?

"What are you talking about?"

"You know fucking well what I'm talking about, kid!" Dean shouted abruptly, startling both the puppy and Adam.

_Go away, go away, go away...what is he...oh,_ Adam bit his lip. His eyes were down and Dean shook him again, like a wolf shoving against an injured pack member to try and get them moving. If they were moving then they were ok, they weren't dying. Adam was scared, and when he was scared it could be traced back to Dean somehow, and right now there was a direct link, only now he couldn't hide because Dean didn't want him to hide. His brother wanted him to be out in the open and not pull the door shut.

"...ok," he tried to bring back the smile from before, but it was hard now that his unrestrained smile from earlier was being focused on like this.

"Ok," Dean nodded, peeling his hand off of him and rubbing it over his face, as if to regain his composure. Then his voice changed, and he was back to himself and he started rattling off names for the puppy. Adam boggled at how his brother could just lapse back into normal like that when he was still left spluttering but he tried, he could do this, he could be normal. Dean needed him to be normal.

"Nancy?"

"_Boy_ names," Adam stressed.

"Drew?"

"Try again."

"That's a boy's name."

"I don't like it though," Adam laughed at Dean's whiny tone, but now his laugh was cautious and painful, because he knew he was under scrutiny.

"Sparky."

"Nope."

"Jeff."

"Hah, maybe, try another one."

"Bobby."

"Let's go for something sophisticated," Adam offered with an amused grin hovering on his face, ready to bolt at the slightest scare.

"Sophisticated? Why do we need a sophisticated name for him, he's a dog."

"Because, no think of one."

"It's your dog, you think of the name."

"Ok..." Adam trailed off, "how about Bartholomew?"

"Too long."

"Jenkins?"

"_No_."

"...I think I like Lenny."

"Let's hope he doesn't squash soft things when he grows up," Dean snorted. Adam stared at him in amazement.

"You've read Steinbeck?"

"I watched the movie once, cuz it had that guy from CSI New York."

Adam rolled his eyes and laughed, settling down into a lazy hum. He petted the puppy and called his new name, asking him how he liked it. 'Lenny' yawned and rolled onto his back, his fat puppy belly showing.

It wasn't long after that when they pulled into the motel parking lot. Adam got out of the car and set Lenny on the ground, he yawned and bounded ahead of him, but not too far. He stayed within a few feet of Dean and Adam as they made their way to the motel room for the night. When they reached the right room and went in, Lenny went in ahead of them and started sniffing at everything.

Sam was sitting up watching TV when they entered and he gave them a once over, looking as though he were trying to decide to ask if they were ok. Adam wondered if they looked as awkward as they felt. As a sort of compromise, Sam ended up noticing Lenny and both his eyebrows shot up into his hairline.

"And where'd you find him?" Sam asked, sounding as though that was the nicest (and most likely not the first) thing he came up with.

"At the graveyard," Adam answered shyly, "the grounds keeper's dog had puppies and he was giving them away...and this one seemed to like me."

"He named him Lenny," Dean added, shrugging off his jacket and tossing it towards the table.

Sam opened his mouth and then closed it, then he said somewhat wearily, "Alright then."

Adam got ready for bed and then took Lenny outside to try and start potty training him. It took a while, but after nearly half an hour out there he got Lenny to poo in the garden beds and mark the side of the building. Then he brought him back inside and set him on the bed he knew he would be sharing with Sam. All of a sudden he realized he had to feed the little guy at some point, but what would he be feeding him?

Sam was sitting at the table with his laptop open, and when Adam reentered the room, waved him over.

"How old is he?"

"Calvin said he was only three weeks, I think," Adam said, watching as Lenny tried to hop up onto Dean's bed without success.

"Fill up one of the mugs with tap water for him to drink for the night, but tomorrow we're gonna have to go and get the stuff to wean him," Sam informed, eyes scanning over the screen. Adam shuffled closer and saw that it was an article about puppy weaning, and was thankful that Sam had thought of it before him.

"Fine, you idjit," Dean said, sounding a lot like Bobby. Adam watched as he reached over and picked Lenny up and set him on the bed.

Lenny scampered about on the bed and then heaved himself up onto Dean's stomach and curled up there. Adam smiled at him, and thought that it was too bad he hadn't grown up with Dean and Sam. Unlike most boys that had older brothers and a father to help raise them, Adam was never exposed to the stereotype of men being too tough to be affectionate all the time. He just had his mom, and whenever he hugged her she would thank him and say she loved all the hugs. Most of his friends were girls, growing up, and how he managed to ditch the 'gay' label in time for high school he had no clue. So initially, when he looked at Lenny curled up on Dean's stomach, he thought that he wished he could do the same. But a minute later he mentally kicked himself, and the smile disappeared from his face.

This was Dean, the scary as hell big brother that would sooner cut off his right hand than show affection for anything that wasn't either the impala or some girl he was going to fuck. Even though Adam only really meant it in a familial sort of way, and he did, he'd curl up with his mom to watch TV when he came home to visit, it wouldn't matter. He'd still get shot in the foot.

"Cuddles?"

_Of all the names he had to use..._Adam shook his head, and went over to the other bed and started getting under the blankets.

"Yeah, Dean?"

When he looked over at his brother he could tell he wanted to call him on it, on him closing the door, on him pulling away again. But somehow Adam realized that Dean couldn't do that in front of Sam. It would just cause another useless argument.

"You want Lenny on your bed with you?"

"Yeah," he nodded, and Dean got up and set Lenny down next to him. Immediately and without any complaint, the puppy curled up against him, and Adam petted him.

"Aren't puppies supposed to be more trouble than this?" Dean wondered sounding confused and impressed at the same time.

"Don't jinx it, Dean," Sam ordered, and Adam could hear him start to shuck off his clothes as he got ready for bed too.

"I'm not," Dean scratched Lenny just behind the ear and he yawned, and then made a happy sort of wheeze.

"Thanks for letting me keep him, Dean," Adam mumbled, his eyes closing.

"Yeah, whatever."

* * *

The next day when they went for breakfast they also stopped at the pet store. Adam went in and bought a puppy milk substitute and dry puppy food, and then a collar, a leash, and a shiny new tag. The collar was thick and a dark brown leather and matched his leash (Dean picked them out, even though it was Adam's dog, and Dean still threatened to kick him into traffic if he made a mess). Adam also got two dog bowls, one for water and one for the puppy mash he would be making for him.

Adam mixed the food as the site Sam had found suggested and brought it in with them in one of Lenny's dog bowls when they went into a diner for breakfast. He set the bowl on the seat next to him and let Lenny scarf it down. The waitress didn't even try to tell them that they couldn't bring dogs in, because with one look from Lenny she was cooing over him and asking after him, asking if she could get anything for him. Adam wasn't hungry, but he ordered some bacon and eggs before Sam started another fight and made Dean mad. He was in a good mood, despite Adam forcing him to take in a dog he didn't want last night, and he was determined not to ruin it.

When Lenny was done with his breakfast, Adam took him outside along with his glass of water and the dog bowl. He cleaned out the dirty bowl and then filled it with water which Lenny eagerly lapped up. Then, Adam told him to go on, and just like that, the little puppy took care of business. He took his sweet time, idling about in the diner's hedges, but he did eventually do as he was told. Adam put the bowl on the floor of the backseat after pouring the water out of it, and then grabbed his glass and went back inside, Lenny following him.

Sam scooted in farther in the booth and rearranged their plates, and Adam fell in next to him. He patted his lap and Lenny tried to leap up, but he was too small. Adam chuckled at him and heaved him up into his lap and then started in on his own breakfast.

"So, Adam," Sam started, "last night found absolutely no connection between the people who were dug up from the cemetery."

"Except that they were all buried in the same cemetery there's nothing, a few went to the same church but not enough that it's more than a coincidence," Dean added.

"Calvin said that there's been a lot of other people dug up over the years, but that they were always so spread out that the police never thought to look into it."

"Calvin's the grounds keeper, right?"

"Yeah."

Adam's fork clinked against the plate and he noticed he'd already ate all of his food. He hadn't been paying attention, just mindlessly shoveling the food into his mouth while he listened to his brothers and added his own two cents. He pushed the plate away and drank more water, feeling oddly comforted by the pain and nausea in his stomach that followed everything he ate.

"So, why would someone raise that many corpses? Usually necromancers end up who they are because a loved one died and they wanted to bring them back to life. But whoever is doing this is just picking random people," Sam said, pointing out what they were all thinking.

"They could be building up an army of undead, brainwashing them to fight for them."

"Dean, this isn't one of your stupid movies, alright."

"But what if it is," Dean's voice sounded a bit too excited, and Adam rolled his eyes without thinking, "we could fight a zombie war!"

"And if we had to, do you realize how much work that would be? Calling in Bobby wouldn't be enough."

"Why not?"

"Because the only way to get rid of zombies is to nail them to their death beds and rebury them, or to get the necromancer to reverse the spell. Someone who's raised an entire army isn't going to just say 'ok, you got me, I'll send them back to the afterlife,'" Sam reminded him, "and with that many coming at us, we aren't going to have the time to track down each grave that belongs to each zombie, dig it up, and nail them in and rebury them."

Dean deflated a little and Adam felt a little bad for him. To any guy in his right mind, fighting off a horde of zombies sounded bad ass, and like an insane amount of fun. But to the three of them, who knew what it took to actually get rid of their foe, it mostly sounded like an impossible task, and an _annoying_ impossible task at that.

"We don't even know who could be the necromancer at this point."

At that the three of them sighed, and Lenny yipped. They looked at each other, and Dean was the first to pull out his cell phone. In a minute it was at his ear and he waited, drumming his fingers on the table. When the waitress returned for their plates, they all asked her for more coffee. Adam even turned his mug over so she could fill it when she came back.

"Bobby? Hey, we need your help..."


	9. Cuddles Updated

**/EDIT:** Added the bar scene. Yay for progress!

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 9 - Cuddles

They spent a good deal of time 'socializing' with the townsfolk, trying to sniff out any potential necromancers. Adam had gone around talking to the members of suburbia, Dean had naturally taken to the bars and clubs, what few there were, and Sam had went to the community buildings like the library, the local churches, and the restaurants. It seemed that there were a handful of candidates, but even they didn't come off as the dark magic type. The three of them learned all about the town's 'dirty laundry', and some of it was pretty bad, but not the kind they were looking for.

Todd Miller was a corrupt business man who owned a few of the banks, most of the restaurants, and an apartment building in town. He was fat and squat, and had slicked back hair and fat, sausage like fingers. He wore sunglasses even inside, and quality, custom-tailored suits. Everything about him spoke of wealth, especially the busty and flirty secretaries he'd 'hired' to wait on his beck and call. He secretly ran a ring of child pornography sites and had been indirectly responsible for the kidnappings of dozens of children around the country. Dean had nearly killed him, until Sam had convinced him to call the feds after they'd figured out their case. The man was one sick bastard, and he had lost his wife and three children in a car accident early on in his...successful career, but again, as Dean pointed out to them, he was just a creep. He didn't give off the vibe of someone who'd branch out into raising people from the dead.

Then there was the nice and well meaning priest whose close friends just kept dying. First it was his parents, then his siblings, then his wife (while she was pregnant with their first child), and then it was his best friend and his best friend's family, and anyone that got even remotely past the 'acquaintance' level with him dropped like flies. One would think he would have been looked into by then, and as it turned out, he had. The feds had scoured every inch of his life and found nothing but horrible, tragic luck. When Sam met Father Jackson he found a frazzled, somewhat detached old man with ragged brown hair, and a stutter. His eyes were spacey and tended to drift in opposite directions, and he licked his lips rather often. According to the congregation, his sermons were inspiring, even if he was a bit disturbing in a one on one conversation. But again, Sam said that everything about him, as sad and eerie as he was, didn't say necromancer.

Of course there was also Calvin Kirkwood, the nice old grounds keeper at the cemetery, but Adam hadn't found anything at his house (he'd gone back and searched his cabin that afternoon) that might even _suggest_ a practicer of dark rites. There was a long list of 'maybe's but they always ran into the same issue with them.

Eventually the three brothers returned to the motel room and collapsed, all of them exhausted. Even Lenny was worn out. Adam had hooked the leash onto his collar and taken him with him on his tour of the neighborhoods when he interviewed people, and he'd trotted along at his side for hours. Adam had taken his backpack with him, and inside it kept the puppy food ingredients and a bottle of water, and Lenny's dog bowls, so he could make sure to feed him and water him every once in a while.

Dean fumbled with the key in the lock, and when he opened the door he stumbled inside, Sam following, and then Adam, with the sound asleep Lenny in his arms. Adam shut the door behind them and he unhooked Lenny's leash from his collar and set him down on the bed closest to the door, next to Dean. Adam kicked off his shoes and fell onto the bed next to Dean and Lenny, lying on his stomach with his arms folded under one of the pillows and his left cheek pressed against the soft fabric. He could hear Sam crash onto the other bed and swear about how there might not even be a case at all, or at least not their type of case.

"When is Bobby going to get here?" Sam asked.

Adam and Dean both grumbled incoherent gibberish, too tired to form whole words. Bobby was supposed to show up sometime that day. He'd called them 'idjits', told them to start talking to the townspeople, and that he'd start looking into any sort of creature that might be digging up the graves for some reason. He hadn't given them any confirmation that he would actually show up to help them at all, or if he was, a time frame as to when he would show up. So, the three of them had done as they were told and now were nearly comatose, it was almost six in the evening, and there was no Bobby to be found.

Adam grumbled when a weight suddenly fell on his neck, his eyes opened and he noticed it was Dean's forearm. He'd had his arms folded over his face, and now spread them out, shifting so he could lie spread eagle. Adam sighed and pushed Dean's arm up and and under his neck as opposed to on top of it, and then closed his eyes again, comfortable once more.

The arm lifted and Adam felt himself sliding over and turning over so his face was pressed into Dean's upper arm and his back was wedged against his side.

"Whatchu-" he tried to grumble but was interrupted by the startled yip of Lenny who was squished between them. Adam shifted so Lenny could clamber up Dean's leg and onto his stomach, and then as a whole they moved more towards the center of the bed. Adam noticed that Dean still hadn't said anything, so he didn't say anything either. As pleased as he was by these turn of events he was fairly certain that if the act itself was acknowledged, Dean would shove him away, possibly storm off, and never attempt such closeness again.

He wasn't even sure what had brought this on, Dean certainly wasn't drunk. Maybe it was the fatigue? Adam went with that reasoning and calmed down, relaxing entirely. It looked like it was nap time until either Bobby showed up or their hunger outweighed their exhaustion.

* * *

Dean had absolutely no clue what he'd been doing. He'd just tried to get more comfortable, and then his arm was under Adam's neck and then he tried to get him off of him, and then he was closer and the puppy crawled onto him and then they were..._cuddling_. He would have sworn or shoved the runt off the bed or something but he just didn't have the energy to care. So he said nothing, after all, Adam wasn't saying anything, and seemed to relax against him. There wasn't a minute of the day anymore that Adam wasn't tensed, or jumpy, or completely blank faced, so Dean let him be.

When Dean woke up, his right arm was curved down and pressed to Adam's chest, his wrist on his hip and his hand on Lenny. Adam's knee was brushing against Dean's right elbow, and his head was up on Dean's shoulder, so that when Dean first started drifting back into consciousness the first thing he really felt was Adam's scalp against his nose, and that he had a crink in his neck from leaning his head over to brush the top of his head. It was comfortably awkward and his skin itched. Dean lifted his head up and looked around the room. Sam was passed out still, and Bobby was sitting at the table across the room. How had he not heard him come in?

"Bobby?" he mumbled, and his adopted-father glanced up at him.

Bobby sighed as he marked the page in the book he was reading and replied, "Hey Dean."

"When did you get here, and how'd you...?"

"Boy, I've been doing this since before you were born, I think I know how to make my way into a locked room without waking its occupants by now, and I got here a few hours ago," Bobby scolded, though Dean noticed they were both talking pretty quietly to avoid waking either Adam or Sam.

"What time is it?"

"Almost ten o'clock," he answered.

Dean groaned, using his left hand to run through his hair because his other hand was occupied with petting Lenny. Bobby arched an eyebrow at him and asked him about the puppy.

"Adam found him, named him, and has paid for his upkeep so far," Dean admitted, "and he hasn't been a bother at all, so I guess I can't really complain, but do you think it'll be ok against what we hunt, Bobby? I don't want this thing to get all mangled and Adam lose it, you know?"

"Well, you do know that's a great dane, right?"

Dean's eyes narrowed, "Oh great."

"I'd say, if you managed to get a vest that had iron and silver lining it, it'd be fine," Bobby mused, "I've seen a fully grown great dane get hit by a car going 40, granted it stopped once it hit, you know, but the dog shook its head, got up, and ran off like it was nothing, and the car was totaled."

Dean snorted, staring down at the little thing, snuggled up on his stomach, peacefully snoozing much like his owner. He couldn't imagine 'little Lenny' growing up to be something that tough. He just looked so fragile now.

"The boys grow to be about as big as a small horse," Bobby told him, and Dean thought that if Adam had to pick any dog to be a hunting dog, in their sense of the word, he'd picked a good one.

"How can you tell what kind he is when he's this little?" Dean asked, his mind slowly waking up now, even though he could feel Adam's heartbeat through their ribs, and his even breathing ghosted across his arm, and all he wanted to do was pass out again.

"Very few puppies are that big at three weeks, Dean," Bobby rolled his eyes.

Dean nodded, too lazy to bother arguing against him and simply asked, "So is there any chance of our necromancer really being a corpse hungry creature?"

"Well so far, the only thing I could find that would have the appetite and the carelessness to consume this many dead is an Aswang-"

"But I thought those lived in the phillipines."

"Exactly."

"So we _are_ dealing with a necromancer," Dean confirmed.

"I dunno, Dean," Bobby shrugged, "this could just be one sick puppy that likes to dig up cadavers for kicks, we've seen weirder."

"Yeah but-"

"But have you seen any zombies running around? Heard of any disturbances aside from those at the cemetery?"

Dean sighed, barely managing to pull his face away from the top of Adam's head before he leant against it. This was the first case Adam had picked for them, and they'd gone with it, not thinking to look for the signs of a bunch of undead running about. He wasn't sure how Adam would take it if the case he'd suggested ended up not being a case at all. That many grave desecrations couldn't just be some perverted creep digging up people. It just didn't make sense.

"Why don't you wake up your brothers and meet me at that diner by the library?" Bobby stood up from the table and stretched, popping his back a few times, "You boys haven't eaten yet, have ya?"

"We passed out as soon as we got back from all the research we did today."

"Alright, well, definitely let's get something to eat, and we can talk it over with food in our bellies."

Dean nodded and watched Bobby grab his keys and his jacket and head out the door. He wasn't too quiet about leaving, and that was what woke up Sam and Adam. Sam's head snapped up from his pillow and he wiped distractedly at his mouth, looking around sleepily. Adam simply shifted against him, whining and nuzzling his shoulder. Dean could feel the itch creeping up his neck and knew he would be blushing soon if he didn't find a way to get Adam awake and away from him.

"Who just left?" Sam yawned.

"Bobby, he came in while we were passed out and was doing some research."

Dean started to sit up halfway, to try and prop himself up on his elbows. That's when Adam started to wake up. He moved with him, also resting on his elbows, but he was still leaning on Dean's shoulder and blinking groggily. Adam turned, his back so closely pressed to Dean's side ended up with him sitting halfway in his lap by the time he was facing Dean. It was only a minute before Adam realized this and clambered away from him, rubbing at his eyes and yawning.

"Where'd he go now?" Adam wasn't looking at him now, and was instead gazing out the window, which only had a blanket of darkness behind it. The lamps in the parking lot had turned on, but with the narrow slits in the blinds, he couldn't see much.

"To the diner we ate at this morning, we're going to go have dinner and 'discuss his findings'," Dean told them, though his eyes were on Adam's back, hoping that somehow this wasn't yet another step back for his brother.

Dean lifted Lenny off of his stomach and set him on the bed near Adam, before scooting off the edge and standing up. He stretched, putting his hands on the small of his back so he could hear the ever-satisfying cracks of his back popping. Sam was making similar movements, and was mostly looking around for his shoes. When Dean turned around Adam was grabbing Lenny's leash and was taking him outside.

"C'mon, Lennard," Adam was mumbling sluggishly as he shuffled out the door, "time for you to use the bathroom."

The door shut and Dean turned towards Sam, asking, "Isn't his name Lenny?"

"Lenny is short for Lennard, Dean," Sam grumbled, pulling on his shoes.

"Right, whatever."

Dean felt compelled to go outside to check on his baby brother, to see if he hadn't locked himself up in his own head again. But for some reason it felt too much like he was going after a jilted lover and trying to talk them down, and that sobered him right quick. The word 'gross' flew through his head so many times it started sounding weird, and lost its meaning. So he grabbed his boots and tugged them on, snagging the keys to the impala and his jacket. After a few minutes looking he found Adam's shoes and took them outside to him, shoving them into his arms perhaps a bit too roughly.

"Hurry up, cuddl—_kid_, I'm starving," Dean faltered, nearly tripping over his own feet as he made his way to the car.

He ended up sitting in the driver's seat, with the car running and the music on to try and calm himself down while he waited for his brothers to get their stuff together and join him. He listened to at leas three songs before Sam appeared next to him in the passenger seat and Adam and Lenny climbed into the back. No one tried to start a conversation over the music as they made their way to the diner.

* * *

When they arrived Bobby nearly chewed them out for making him wait so long, but instead started eating his food which had already been brought to the table. Somehow, Bobby commanded a side all to himself, so Dean claimed the inside and had Adam squished between him and Sam because he was the smallest. Lenny sat in his lap with his head resting on the table top. Sam flagged down a waitress and they all ordered their usual fare: Dean got a bacon cheeseburger and Sam got a soup and salad special and Adam ordered whatever Bobby had gotten. It looked like Bobby was scarfing down a philly cheese steak sandwich, and Dean wasn't sure Adam liked those but he was too busy leaning up against the wall of the diner to consider bickering over orders.

"So, boys, I spoke with princess over there, and it's looking more and more like its not our type of work," Bobby went straight to the point, cutting through any small talk or speculation, seeing as he'd already been through that with Dean.

"But, what about any creatures, maybe? I thought you were looking into that today," Sam tried, and Dean noticed that he sounded like he agreed with Bobby but was asking for Adam's sake.

Dean wasn't sure if he could pay attention to the conversation because he might start chewing a hole in the wall he was pushing up against to try and provide some space between himself and Adam. He hoped he wasn't being _too_ obvious, but probably wouldn't care if he was, either.

"_Hey_ idjit, you alright?" Bobby snapped at him, and Dean made an 'I'm innocent, really' face, settling down with his forearms on the table.

"Yep, just hungry, starving, where the hell is our food, anyways?"

"We just ordered a few minutes ago, Dean," Sam rolled his eyes.

"Oh yeah, anyways, as you were saying, Bobby...?"

Bobby was watching him carefully and Dean tried to maintain an easy going smile.

"I think you all should look through the obituaries and try to see if you can't find anything unusual about the people who were dug up."

"We did that already, Bobby," Dean retorted.

"Well do it again, idjit."

Before Dean could say he didn't want to their orders showed up and were put in front of them. Dean knew he'd been hungry but the feeling was magnified when his favorite food was presented to him. He dug right in, shamelessly ignoring any sort of social etiquette that might have been living somewhere in his subconscious.

* * *

After dinner there was a bit of bickering over what to do seeing as it was too late to go to the library. Bobby decided for himself that he was going back to the motel to get some sleep, but the boys had just slept for the past four hours and weren't anywhere near tired. Dean voted they all go to the bar.

"Dean you've spent almost the whole day in bars-"

"So?"

Sam rolled his eyes and tried to say, "Well we should at least drop Adam off at the motel before we-"

"Why?"

Sam looked like he was going to say 'he's underage' before he realized, "Oh yeah, you are twenty-one now aren't you?"

Adam nodded, though Dean wouldn't be able to tell anyone what his baby brother's feelings over the topic were because he wasn't paying close enough attention to find out.

"Besides, Sammy, the man of this family has to bring home the bacon somehow, and I haven't hustled pool in weeks," Dean smirked.

Sam only punched him once, and Dean only had to bully him for a few more minutes before he finally agreed, and Adam had only ever stood up to Dean once, and that was for Lenny. So they all fell into the impala and made their way to Dean's favorite out of the bar's he'd visited earlier while doing 'research'.

* * *

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When Adam had woken up earlier, he'd felt safer, and more at peace than he had in two years. He was comfortable, and relaxed. Of course, that was only until he realized that Dean was awake too, and blushing like crazy. Then he made sure to get away from him, and to attempt to act something like normal for the rest of the evening.

Now, however, they were headed for the bar, which was definitely someplace he didn't want to be. Adam didn't like going out places, he didn't like being around lots of people, and he certainly didn't care for alcohol. He supposed that with older brothers like his, who had a beer as they were casually driving down the interstate, he should probably get over that dislike. But he just didn't like how it made him feel, how it made him think. Adam was not a happy drunk. He was a rather miserable drunk. He didn't cry, or sob, necessarily, and he always remembered the 'night before.' Instead he felt lower than he'd ever felt before, and he remembered everything and anything bad that had ever happened to him, and his faults were held out in plain sight for him to wallow in. Adam discovered that he was also more prone to being openly affectionate with the people he cared about when he was drunk. If he was at the bar with his brothers, and he got hammered, Adam had no doubt that he'd be draping himself over them for the rest of the night.

They arrived at the bar in a matter of minutes, and wandered in. Adam carried Lenny in his jacket. The bar was dimly lit, and filled with smoke that made the edges of his vision fuzzy and lulled him into a foggy sense of calm. Adam noticed that the bar stools had backs to them, and he shuffled over to one. He curled up on one of the stools with his shins pressed against the bar edge, and waved to the barkeep.

"Alright, kid, lemme see some ID," the old man scoffed.

Adam wrangled out his wallet from his pants pocket and apologized to Lenny who yipped at being jostled so much. He handed his drivers license to the bartender who examined it carefully, flipping it over and rotating it until finally he gave it back.

"Now what do you want?"

"I just want a diet coke, sir," Adam smiled weakly.

The bartender laughed heartily and nodded, wandering down the bar to get him a glass and fill it at a soda machine hidden amongst all the liquor bottles. When he returned and handed him the cup, Adam took it and sipped at it lazily. Lenny licked his face and woofed to try and get his attention. Adam petted him and he settled down again. Someone clambered onto the stool next to him and Adam tried to avoid looking at them. He wanted to just wait for Dean and Sam to have their fun and take him back to the motel. _Where are they, anyways?_ Adam asked himself.

He turned in his seat and looked around the room, but it was difficult to focus on any one person through the smoke. Eventually he managed to get his eyes focused in on the pool tables near the back and saw Dean chatting amiably with a few men circling the tables. There was a way his brother walked as he eyed the tables and the men he was probably playing against. It was almost predatory, he stalked slowly as if he owned the building, and he owned them, he was just deciding what he was going to do with them. Adam thought that his brother looked pretty bad ass while he had his game face on, while he hustled those poor suckers out of their money. He wouldn't tell him that, of course, he'd sound like a suck-up. But even if he wouldn't admit it, a small swell of pride lingered in his chest as he watched money changing hands faster and faster.

_One brother located..._Adam mused, _where's Sam?_ Again his gaze roved over the walls, and the crowds, looking for the tell-tale square shaped sasquatch that was Sam Winchester. He was sitting in a booth it turned out, watching Dean over the top of a book he was reading. He was also taking notes as he read, and taking the occasional swig from a beer bottle sitting on his table. _Working_, he guessed.

While Dean was something to be feared and admired in Adam's mind, he found that looking up to Sam was like looking at himself in a few years. Whenever he listened to Sam talk about a case, or his findings after long hours of research, it would turn out that they thought a lot a like, and they drew mostly the same conclusions. But of course, Sam was stronger than him, he'd faced more, had to deal with more. He was just as closed off, but he could still show most of what he was feeling without thinking about it. He kept his stronger reactions to himself, but the little ones he let go. Adam had decided that maybe he could try to achieve the same thing. Let go of the little things, and put a lock on the bigger ones. How hard could that be?

_Brothers located,_ Adam thought as he relaxed inwardly and looked down at Lenny again, who appeared quite comfortable curled up in his jacket. He was startled by a voice speaking near him, but calmed down quickly, assuming that it was directed towards some other patron.

"Hey cutie, what are you drinking?" a feminine voice asked.

A second later and someone had nudged his shoulder and his eyes shot up from his glass. Heavy lidded brown eyes framed with mascara laden eyelashes were riveted to his face, they were matched with full cheeks and pouted lips. Adam wasn't sure how old the woman was, but she was definitely older than him. Her hair was thick and sculpted into a shape that could pass for a wig, and it was a dark black, like Lenny's fur. She had one elbow on the bar, and her face perched in her hand, burgundy colored talons tapping against her jawline.

"Excuse me...?" he mumbled at her, intimidated by her beauty and wondering why she was even looking at him.

The nameless woman laughed, and her laughter was almost musical, "What are you drinking?"

Adam wished he could say something manly sounding, like whiskey, or scotch, maybe, or even a beer, but ultimately he couldn't, so he told the truth, "Diet soda..."

She smiled patiently at him and told the bartender that she'd have whatever it was Adam had ordered. The bartender nodded and soon the sultry woman staring at him was drinking diet coke with him, and Adam didn't think she had blinked once since she'd started talking to him.

"Now, sweetheart, you have a name, hmm?"

"Adam Milligan," he answered automatically, inwardly kicking himself for not using his alias, "What's _your_ name?"

"Amanda Rockwell," she demurred, finally blinking and taking a sip of her soda, "now, Adam, tell me, have you lost someone important to you?"

Adam narrowed his eyes at her, startled by the question and not really wanting to answer, "That's not really the type of thing you ask a person you've just met."

"Perhaps not, but it's just a question, is the answer all that horrible?"

Adam found himself not liking this woman, but he felt compelled to answer her, to carry on the conversation. There was something about her eyes, or maybe the tantalizing glimpse of cleavage at the neckline of her dress that instilled him with a vast reservoir of patience from which to draw. The hand not occupied with his drink settled on Lenny protectively.

"Yes, I have."

"Family, lover, friend?"

"Family," he spat.

Amanda shifted backwards, swiveling the barstool so she could lean against its high back. She spread her legs so her short black dress was taut on her thighs and hips. The shimmering scaly fabric rode up her thighs and created a shadow between them on the seat that grabbed Adam's eyes and held them for all of ten minutes. He forced himself to look at her face, and then at the bar, fighting the growing attraction he was feeling.

"No need to be quite so difficult Adam, sharing confessions and secrets with strangers is an ancient past time," Amanda dithered, "and is notoriously soothing for frazzled nerves."

Adam looked desperately over his shoulder for his brothers, but both were preoccupied with 'work'; Dean with his hustling, and Sam with his frenzied research. Even if he were to flag them down what would he say? _Sorry guys, but could you please save me from this gorgeous older woman and her uncomfortably personal questions?_ Yeah, that didn't make him sound like a pussy _at all_. Adam made a displeased sort of noise and turned back towards Amanda. He probably looked a lot like a cornered animal.

"It was your mother, wasn't it?"

"What makes you say that?" he avoided her eyes, looking more at the floor.

"Just a guess, but you looking to your right confirmed it, you're remembering her death now, aren't you?"

"What's _wrong_ with you?" Adam blurted, "And what does me looking to the right have to do with anything?"

"It's taught in profiling, Adam, for some reason there's a switch in the subconscious that makes it so that when you're recalling a memory, you look to the right, and when you're telling a fabrication, you look to the left. I don't know why it's that way, it just is."

"You skipped the first question," he pointed out, deadpan.

Amanda smirked, "Now tell me, was it a violent death?"

Adam shoved his glass onto the counter and flicked a dollar or two onto the bar. He glared at her and hopped off the barstool, holding Lenny so he wouldn't be jarred too much from the movement. Then, as he was about to stalk over to Sam's booth and brood with him, Amanda called to him, and her words were ones he couldn't ignore.

"I could bring her back, you know," Amanda purred.

Adam froze before turning around and staring at her, wide eyed, "What?"

"My going price for long distance resurrections is fifty grand, but if you bought the plane tickets for us to fly out to Minnesota, it could cost you under ten," she explained, her voice dropping a few decibels and sounding every bit the sultry saleswoman.

Adam gaped at her, his mouth opening but no words coming out. She laughed again, and somehow her laugh didn't sound nearly as pleasant as the first time he'd heard it. Amanda slipped off her barstool, straightening out her dress and leaving her drink on the counter. She patted him on the shoulder and leaned in close, her breath on his ear.

"I'll be here every night for the rest of the week, but then I gotta move to the next town, so why don't you think about it, and get back to me?" she murmured, and he shivered.

Adam listened to the click of her heels on the wooden floor as she strut out of the bar, leaving him gobsmacked. He held onto Lenny, wanting to whimper with him for some reason.

Sluggishly, he shuffled over to Sam's booth, falling into the tattered cushion next to him. Sam scooted over for him and started rattling off a theory he had about a creature that might be the cause of their grave desecrations. Adam simply let his head fall onto Sam's shoulder, and he sagged against his side, feeling weak and tired. He had no idea why he was so exhausted all of a sudden.

"Adam, you ok?" Sam asked, though he didn't try to shake him off. Sam was comfortable and safe, he wouldn't kick him in the teeth if Adam leant on him. _But Dean didn't kick me either...maybe that was just a fluke,_ he thought weakly.

"It's not a creature, Sam," Adam mumbled.

"Did you figure out who here could be our necromancer, then?"

"Yeah, some lady, Amanda Rockwell."

"That name doesn't sound familiar," Sam countered.

Adam nodded against his shoulder, "Cuz she's a traveling saleslady, she resurrects people's loved ones for them for a price. She's not making an army, she's just running a business."

"How did you find this out?" Sam's voice sounded intrigued, almost excited, like offering to turn people's lost loves into zombies was a great idea.

"She tried to sell me my mom as a zombie for fifty grand, Sam, that's how," Adam bit out.

Before Sam could apologize or ask him any questions, a familiar voice had Adam's head snapping off of Sam's shoulder. His eyes were open and he shook himself.

"What's the matter, kid?" Dean's words washed over him like a bucket of cold water, startling him into alertness.

"Nothing," Adam answered without thinking about whether or not it was true, "we found out who the necromancer is."

Dean eyed him wearily but didn't press, instead pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket that had previously looked like a giant tumor on his thigh, "Well, looks like we all made out like bandits tonight. I got like three hundred dollars, here."

"Quit gloating, before someone mugs you, Dean," Sam rolled his eyes.

"You are the most ungrateful wife, ever," Dean retorted, crossing his arms over his chest indignantly, "do you know how many women would be thrilled that their men had made three hundred in all of an hour or two?"

"I'm not your wife, jerk."

"You are too, bitch, now get a few beers for the road while the kid and I wait in the car," Dean smirked, holding out a ten to Sam.

Adam was all but shoved out of the booth, and he scrambled to his feet so Sam could storm over to the bar. Dean wrapped and arm around his shoulders and herded him towards the door. Adam felt extremely warm, wedged under his older brother's arm like that, and wasn't about to protest.

Once they were outside the comfort was torn away rather quickly, however, as he was thrown in the general direction of the impala and Dean stood a few paces away, hands in his jacket pockets and the dangerous smirk flashing across his face. His jaw locked tight read like anger, but the awkward look in his eye said worry. All together, to the trained eyes of his little brother, Dean Winchester looked concerned and yet embarrassed to be so. Adam was thoroughly confused.

"You're not ok," Dean said bluntly.

Adam nodded. He wanted that safe warmth back, but clinging to Dean in any situation was unacceptable, and at the moment he was pretty sure he'd get punched if he stepped within arms reach. He wasn't sure what Dean wanted him to say, so he just agreed with him. He didn't know, really, if he was ok or not. He felt rattled, and yet slow, like everyone around him was moving at lightning speed and he was wearing cement shoes. Adam couldn't possibly keep up with those blurs of movement all around him, were they crazy?

"Why?" Dean asked, his rough voice making a single word sound like an order.

Adam hated questions he couldn't just nod or shake his head to. He opened his mouth to answer, but he knew that if he told the truth, which was that he didn't really know, he'd get himself in a shit load of trouble. But if he didn't answer, then he'd be in just as much trouble. He had to come up with a reason, any reason. Whether it was believable or not didn't really matter. Well that wasn't necessarily true, if it sounded too much like a lie he'd be in trouble too. Adam was starting to fall back into the deep recesses of his own mind, but with Dean's gaze pinning him to the impala he was scared as hell to fall too far back. His shoulders hunched and he felt cornered, with no way out. Whichever route he took he was bound to get hurt.

"The necromancer woman offered to resurrect my mom for fifty grand...apparently that's all she's worth...I dunno," Adam held onto Lenny like he was a security blanket. Lenny licked his chin and yipped.

"Adam," Dean barked, garnering his attention if only because he used his actual name, "your mom's worth can't be measured in money. Moms are one of the most valuable things in the world, you know that."

"...yeah."

"We're going to get this bitch, right?"

Adam nodded. He didn't hear Dean's footsteps but suddenly he was staring into his brother's worried eyes, his head being held firmly in both of Dean's hands.

"_Right?_" Dean asked again.

"R-right," Adam muttered, and Dean's hands let go of his head and fell onto his shoulders, shaking him. Then, Dean was in the driver's seat and Sam was walking out of the bar, scowling.

Adam hurried into the backseat, letting Lenny out of his jacket and onto the seat next to him. But instead of staying put, he ended up climbing back into Adam's lap. He listened to his brothers bicker for most of the trip back to the motel. It was as they were climbing out of the impala and strolling across the parking lot towards their room that Sam regurgitated what Adam had told him so that Dean could be brought into the loop.

"Huh," Dean said, "haven't heard that one before."

"Necromancers can't just keep dozens of zombies alive all the time like that so she probably waits for them to get far enough away and then reverses the spell," Sam added, "it's horrible, but it's an effective con."

"Well why don't we just give her an award for the best con artist of the year, Sammy," Dean teased.

"That's not what I meant, Dean."

"Yeah, right."

Adam ignored the two of them, instead focusing on getting Lenny ready for bed. He made him some dinner, let him drink some tap water and then got ready for bed. Then he took Lenny outside to go to the bathroom, and by the time he was back inside his brothers were making their own pre-bedtime preparations. Sam was in the bathroom brushing his teeth, and Dean was flinging every article of clothing except his boxers in any direction, not really caring where they ended up. Then Dean and Sam traded places and Adam watched Sam go around picking up Dean's clothes and tossing them onto his brother's bag.

Adam set Lenny on the bed he shared with Sam and watched as he pranced around, practically hopping. He would slam his front paws down and put his butt up in the air, tail wagging energetically then stand up, chase his tail for a few minutes and then run around and repeat the process all over again. Adam rolled his eyes and smiled, ruffling the puppy's ears which resulted in a playful snarl and an attempt to chomp on his fingers. Adam crawled under the blankets and dragged Lenny onto his belly where he jumped from side to side, while growling as fiercely as a puppy his age could growl. He probably thought he looked pretty tough. Adam rolled onto his right side and caused Lenny to fall down next to him. He sensed his master's fatigue and laid down, though he did fidget for quite a while.

Eventually the lamps were turned off and Adam could feel the other side of the bed dip and Sam crawl in. He glanced over his shoulder, intending to say 'goodnight, Sam.' But the words didn't leave his lips as he saw Dean sprawled out on his front, where he'd expected Sam to be.

"If you don't quit it, your face'll get stuck that way," Dean mumbled against his pillow, "and if your mouth was stuck open that wide, we couldn't let you out of our sight, you'd be _somebody's_ bitch real fast."

Adam's mouth snapped shut and he glared at his brother, his hands twisting in the sheets. Sam told Dean to shut up, and Dean told him to fuck himself, and then Adam was caught in the crossfire again. He turned away from Dean, burying his face in the crook of his arm. He suppressed an exasperated groan. It didn't take long for the idiotic tiff to die down, they were all tired.

Before Adam could pass out completely, though, and arm snaked around his neck and tugged him backwards. He shivered as suddenly he could feel Dean's ribs impressed upon his spine, and he was held in a headlock. His head was on Dean's pillow, and his brother's face was against his scalp, his breath tussling his hair. When he swallowed, his adam's apple moved against the inside of his elbow. It was an awkward embrace that he wasn't about to question. This time the closeness was definitely sober, and definitely intentional. Adam grinned against the darkness of the room, sighing contentedly. Dean's smirk was pressed to his skin.


	10. Waffles and Headaches

**NOTE:** I realized as I was writing this that this is starting to come off a bit like wincest. If it starts to go that way, I'll post any 'wincest' type things as a separate story and keep this one as just familial affection, ok? Cuz I really do want this to be just plain brotherly affection.

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 10 - Waffles and Headaches

Adam guessed that he probably looked a little deranged. The smile that he was trying to contain was so strong it was almost painful. It pressed against the back of his teeth, pushing them against his lips which were pulled tight into an awkward grimace. His fork was clenched in his fist and trembled. But none of this was scrutinized because Sam was in the bathroom, Bobby hadn't shown up yet, and Dean was flirting with the waitress over at the counter. He was the only one left in the booth (aside from Lenny who was sitting next to him), and he had fit himself into the corner.

As the urge to grin like a loon finally subsided his whole body relaxed, his muscles uncoiling and he steadily ate another few bites of his waffles. He hadn't even been prompted to order the waffles he was eating slowly but surely, he'd just asked for them. He even liked the taste of them. Adam had ordered something that he actually wanted. The thought that he could want something and actually ask for it, without hesitation, was so foreign to him that he felt almost detached from the act. It was like it wasn't him, Adam Milligan, who had ordered these waffles. It had been someone else. He'd thought of telling Dean this startling revelation only to realize how silly it might sound, and that he really wouldn't understand. Sam might understand, but he might also worry. That left Bobby, and Adam always felt awkward about starting conversations with Bobby, so instead he resolved to tell Lenny about it later.

He was relatively calm for the moment, his muscles loose and cooperative. Then Dean sat down next to him, hoisting Lenny off of the seat and putting him onto the table. He threw his arm up onto the booth's backrest, slouching down. Adam could hear his boots propping up on the cushion opposite them, and his muscles seized up as Dean ruffled his hair. The grin almost burst onto his face, and to keep it inside he had to bite the inside of his cheek hard. His fork hand shook sporadically but slowed down to a mild twitch. He was rigid again, and Adam wished he could be mad, or depressed, or blank even. Anything was better than the euphoria he was trying to hold back. It was like tying a pebble to bumper of the impala and hoping it would slow the car down. Just as futile as it was comical.

"Hey," Dean started, his voice unexpectedly close, "what's going on in there, huh?"

Dean scooted closer, so that Adam's shoulder was jabbing into his brother's armpit, and he could easily fall against him and relax. But that seemed like something he would do in a happy-go-lucky dream world where everything was perfect and without reprimand, something that he would only do drunk or stupid or both.

Waking up engulfed in Dean's arms that morning seemed like a far away dream. Even though it was the cause for his spasmodic behavior now, it still felt as if it hadn't happened. He'd been peacefully asleep, curled up in the fetal position. He had his fingers hooked around Dean's collar bone, and his feet flat against his hips, knees on his ribs. Adam's face was smothered against his sternum, and thick, muscled arms were wrapped around him like a shield and a blanket. Then the bathroom door had shut and the sound had woken them both up suddenly. Dean had groggily dragged his forehead down the side of Adam's face and released him, rolling onto his back and then off the bed with a thud. A moment later, as if the whole thing was perfectly normal, the three brothers went about their morning routine.

When Adam still hadn't answered or looked at him, Dean poked him in the side of the head with his left hand, the hand that was attached to the arm that was draped around his shoulders, that smelled like leather, and the impala, and a cologne that was probably too heavy...and damnit he was so close-

"Kid..."

"I'm ok," Adam bit out, the grin jumping onto his face for a split second before he wrestled it down again, "I'm actually...really..."

"Am I interrupting something?" Bobby's voice inquired, just the right amount of subterfuge lacing his words.

Dean's head snapped up from Adam's shoulder, and his arm was drawn back to hang over the side of the booth behind them. Suddenly Adam felt a breath rush out of him, he could breathe. That must have been what was making the stars appear around the edges of his eyes. He hadn't been breathing? Adam started poking at his waffles some more. He didn't trust himself to talk so he just filled his mouth with syrup and baked goods. Adam watched Bobby shove Dean's boots off of the seat and sit down in their place. Lenny had been sitting patiently and obediently on the table top for the past several minutes, and upon Bobby's arrival had turned around and pranced towards him excitedly. Bobby picked him up off the table and set him down on the seat next to him.

"You shouldn't put the puppy up on the table, that's just unsanitary," Bobby scolded.

Dean shrugged, and Adam swallowed his mouthful and quickly reloaded. Sam appeared finally, sitting down on Dean's other side, causing him to scoot closer to Adam who in turn scooted towards the wall. Bobby flagged down a waitress and ordered his breakfast, Sam and Dean doing the same. Adam had his food given to him at a surprising speed because the waitress had remembered him from the other day, when he hadn't ordered a thing. She couldn't have been a few years older than him and still she reacted towards his malnourished appearance like a mother hen and got his order out of the kitchen faster than he thought was really necessary.

"So, what's this I hear about you three tracking down our necromancer?"

Dean supplied the story, sparing Adam the trouble of repeating it. The waitress returned with coffee for Adam's older brothers and pseudo-uncle, and Dean got a chance to flirt with her some more. Adam felt vaguely irritated at the skeezy tone that flooded his older brother's voice, and even more agitated that it seemed to work. He saw the escape from the troubling, overwhelming joy in this needling annoyance. It was a relief to have a reason to be displeased rather than the opposite, and he honed in on the feeling. He picked at it like a scab, rubbing in dirt and and gravel, inflaming and infecting the wound that had really been just a scratch. By the time he'd finished his breakfast a few minutes later, he felt far more comfortable wallowing in his unmitigated and rather senseless vexation. He could repress anger far easier, and soon his face was blank, and his eyes unfocused.

"This doesn't make sense," Bobby told them after gulping down some caffeine, "a necromancer like this, she's been doing business a long time, and she's probably run into hunters before."

"So you think it's a trap, somehow?"

"That or the dumbest thing she's ever going to do."

Dean's face scrunched up in confusion, "But why would she set up a trap for us? How would she know we were hunters, and why wouldn't she just leave town like usual?"

"I don't know, I just don't think she'd walk up to a hunter and let them in on the fact that she raises the dead as her day job."

Adam sipped at his water and raised an eyebrow at Bobby, "But she wasn't talking to Dean or Sam, she was talking to me."

"And what do you think we've been molding ya into these past few months, boy?" Bobby gruffed, rolling his eyes.

"Oh, I know, but I mean-"

"She probably didn't know he was a hunter," Dean explained for him.

Sam nodded, "He doesn't look like one, necessarily."

"So you think that she really did just ask the wrong person?"

"Looks that way," Adam mumbled, latching back onto the straw in his water glass.

"So, all we have to do is have Adam show up at the bar tonight to make a deal with her, we gank her, drag her back to the motel, find out where her altar is, and happily ever after," Dean concluded.

"Sounds like a plan," Bobby agreed.

Adam didn't mind being bait so much as he did having to talk to Amanda again. He really didn't like her. She was persistent and she asked all the right questions and pushed all the right buttons. She had him frothing at the mouth in a few minutes, and not just inwardly, it was showing on his face. That just made him hate her more. Then, after having worked himself up over the thought of being in the same room as Amanda, the waitress, Linda, arrived with their food. She passed out the orders with a perky smile, and Adam noticed that since they'd last seen her, her uniform blouse had been unbuttoned just enough to reveal that much more cleavage. Dean smiled at her and winked.

Adam shot her a glare, not really caring if she noticed. She flinched, and her hand flew to her forehead, as if someone had hit her. Dean asked her if she was okay, still with that same damn charming smile.

"Oh, I'm..._ow_, sorry, I dunno what's wrong with me, I just got this migraine all of a sudden," her face screwed up in agony and she drifted away from their table. Adam heard her call to a co-worker, asking her to take over her station for a few minutes, and she disappeared into the kitchen.

Adam felt a tad smug, if not a bit confused at how well timed that migraine had been. He found Lenny was looking at him over the table, his paws up on the edge, and he could hear his tail wagging.

"Hey Bobby," Adam asked, "you mind passing Lenny over here?"

"Sure," Bobby agreed, scooting Adam's empty plate aside and picking the boisterous puppy up and handing him over.

Adam took him and set him in his lap, petting him contentedly. When he looked up again to thank Bobby he found his pseudo-uncle giving him a look that made him distinctly uncomfortable. It was a look that said he knew what Adam had done, but what he'd done, not even Adam knew.

"That was weird," Sam commented while he dug into his eggs benedict, "I hope she's ok."

"Yeah, me too, I totally was gonna get lucky with her," Dean added.

Sam smacked him, and Dean hit him back, and Bobby kicked them both in the shins, "No _hitting_, or at least not inside. Go rassle on the pavement."

His brothers settled down and ate their breakfast, and Adam reached down under the table for his backpack, which was sitting between his feet. He dug around inside for the things he needed to make Lenny's breakfast and pulled them out. Adam occupied himself with making a bit of puppy-mash for Lenny and letting him eat, despite Dean's protests that _he_ was eating and he didn't appreciate the smell of dog kibble. Adam ignored him dutifully, and once his puppy was done eating, he forced his brothers out of the booth so he could take him outside.

Adam took his backpack with him and after Lenny had finished his business, sat down on the curb outside the diner. He chose to wait out there for his brothers and Bobby to eat the rest of their breakfast. Lenny was leashed, and the handle was looped securely around Adam's wrist. He ran around him in loops and all around the sidewalk nearby, always at the end of his rope, bounding and playing and snarling at anything that moved. Adam let him run, knowing that it would wear him out eventually.

After a while the doors to the diner opened and his family came out, and Dean looked all too pleased with himself. He was fiddling with a peace of paper, and Adam just knew that it had 'Linda's name and number on it.

"Bobby, you mind taking these crazy kids back to the motel? We've got the rest of the day to kill, since this necromancer's coming tonight, and I'm gonna take Linda home and take good care of her," Dean drawled.

"Yeah, yeah, don't forget you're working," Bobby grumbled, waving Adam over, and Sam just scoffed.

Dean wandered back into the diner. Adam looked up at Bobby and asked what that was about, even though he had an inkling already what the answer would be.

"Linda's not feeling too well so she's taking the rest of the day off, and Don Juan in there is gonna give her a ride home and pander to the invalid's every whim," Bobby rolled his eyes, "now c'mon, get in."

Adam stood up and tugged Lenny in the direction of Bobby's old junker car. He clambered into the backseat while Sam of course claimed shotgun. It was an unspoken arrangement that he never questioned because it wasn't all that important to him.

As they pulled out the parking lot, Adam glanced out the back window at the front doors of the diner where Dean walked out with Linda on his arm. He eyed her disdainfully, feeling somewhat surprised by how much he hated her. He had no reason to, she certainly hadn't done anything to him. But suddenly, just before they turned the corner and Dean and his prize faded out of sight, he saw Linda collapse, falling to the ground, Dean just barely catching her in time. Adam's eyes widened and he turned around, facing the front, spooked. He also felt somewhat guilty but he wasn't sure why.

When they pulled into the motel parking lot and parked, closer to Bobby's room than theirs, Adam was more than a little rattled. Had he done something to that woman? He hadn't meant to. How could he, anyways? All he did was glare at her, and find her mildly annoying, and then he even felt bad for thinking of her that way. But still, first her head started hurting when he looked at her wrongly, and then when he glared at her out the car's rear window, she fell down. She probably fainted. Panic coursed through him at the thought of maybe having killed her, and he hoped that she was okay.

Adam got out of the car, pulling his backpack onto his shoulder and helping Lenny down onto the asphalt. He shut the car door and followed Sam to their room. They thanked Bobby for driving them back, and both went into the room. Adam unhooked Lenny from his leash and fell down onto the bed, kicking off his shoes as he climbed onto it more fully. His head was wrapped around the idea that he'd hurt Linda and he couldn't figure out how, and occasionally images of Dean flirting with, and smiling and smirking and winking at her filtered in too. All he wanted was for all those thoughts to go away, and to take a nap until it was bait time. He wanted to finish this case, and get out of this town. Adam sighed, and listened to his brother move around the room. The familiar sounds lulled him, and he slowly drifted off.

He was probably asleep for all of an hour before their door was unlocked and roughly thrown open and then shut. Adam looked up and saw a very displeased Dean taking off his shoes and crashing onto the other bed. Sam asked him what was wrong and Dean explained how Linda had passed out the moment they'd left, and he ended up having a co worker take her home. He'd been so miffed at having _still_ missed out on getting some, that he'd drove around for a while, grabbed a beer and then come back to the motel.

Adam thought this would really not be a good time to bring up the fact that Linda passing out might have been his fault, so he kept it to himself. Inwardly he was greatly relieved that he hadn't killed her. Though he wasn't sure that any of her strange and rather sudden problems had really been his fault. Either way he tried to go back to sleep. But his brother's voices shot back and forth, and they kept him awake.

"Just because you didn't get to sleep with the waitress doesn't mean I have to go and get you pie and candy to make you feel better."

"Dude, it totally does."

"What? Why?"

"Because you're my brother, you're supposed to take care of me in my time of suffering."

"You're not suffering, you're whining, there's a difference."

"PIE!" Dean shouted childishly.

"Whatever."

Adam lifted his head barely and saw Sam snatch the keys to the impala out of Dean's hand and walk out the door. He settled down again, and was about to try again when-

"Are you _ever_ going to look at me?"

Adam's eyes opened and he stared incredulously at Dean, "...what?"

"There we go," Dean smirked, "now you gonna tell me why you were freakin' the hell out at breakfast?"

Adam was scared for a moment, thinking that Dean had noticed him glaring at Linda, and had made the connection and thought he was a horrible person. But then, he realized that Dean meant his spasming and twitching from when he'd been far too happy while eating his waffles. Of course, thinking about that reminded him of the feeling and then he was thinking about what spawned it, and then he was happy again. He tensed up and felt extraordinarily exasperated.

"Oh, you're making the face again, so at least you're listening to me," Dean teased.

It felt like the grin was trying to punch through his gritted teeth and it hurt more than he figured it should. He was staring at the blanket, and he was too focused on holding down the troublesome feeling and so he hadn't noticed Dean get up off the other bed and come to sit on the edge of his. Then Dean poked him in the stomach and Adam jerked away, his eyes landing on his brother's face immediately. Dean had that awkward, worried look in his eyes again.

"I'm fine," Adam told him adamantly, though his voice was shaky from the effort of slowly failing repression, "I'm just..."

"...what?"

Adam chewed on the word, finding it bitter tasting and he stuck to the roof of his mouth, unwilling to be said. Why was this so hard? He didn't even know anymore, and wasn't sure if he had ever really known the reasoning.

"...happy."

Dean's eyes narrowed and his mouth twisted in that way that told Adam he was really lost.

"You're...happy?"

Adam nodded awkwardly, "I wish I wasn't."

"Wait, no, I'm lost here," Dean held up a hand, as if he could pause the world around him and give himself time to think, "so you twitching and looking like you got your junk shot off, that's you being _happy_?"

Adam felt the blush on his face so strongly that he hid the lower half of his face behind his hands. Dean shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.

"...well ok, that's good to know...for future reference, I guess."

"I'm sorry," Adam offered, "I just don't like being this happy, it's really hard to hold back."

"So don't!" Dean blurted, his voice so loud that it startled Adam.

"It's not that easy..."

"Why not?"

"I dunno."

Dean rolled his eyes and rubbed his forehead wearily, "Okay, fine, whatever. What brought on this painful looking fit of joy anyways?"

Adam tried to curl up but his knees ran into Dean and so he pulled them back quickly. He shook his head and wanted to cover up his whole face but decided that made him look too much like a little kid. His whole body sighed, and Dean grumbled in annoyance.

"Kid, look, we don't have all day, as luck would have it, Sam would actually be prompt this one time out of a million and-"

"This morning..." Adam interjected painfully, "when I woke up."

He thought his muscles had been aching and stiff before, now they were like cement. He couldn't move if he tried, and he wanted to sink through the bed and then through the floor. Or just to disappear maybe. That would be nice. Dean faltered, and Adam thought that maybe he should have stayed quiet and let Dean ramble. Even if it pissed him off, it would be better than him never again coming within a few feet of him.

"Oh," he said, finally.

"...yeah," Adam mumbled lamely.

"Really?"

"Yep."

"That's it?"

Adam glanced up at him reflexively at the surprise, and noticed that Dean was smirking at him, not looking awkward in the slightest. Mostly he just appeared to be incredibly entertained. Suddenly Dean clambered up onto the bed, on all fours he leant over him, and then, fell on him. Adam was squished between his brother and the mattress and eventually he rolled onto his back to try and breathe better. Dean turned them over onto their sides, and Adam once again had his face pressed against Dean's chest, as it had been that morning. His arms wrapped around him, and Adam tried to breathe. It wasn't that he was being held too tightly, but rather, there was something about the wakeful proximity that threw his involuntary functions out the window. He just forgot to breathe.

Dean pulled away after a few minutes to get a good look on his face, and Adam managed to let out a breath and gulp in fresh air.

"You ok...?"

"Fine," Adam quipped, and broken as it was, a grin petered out onto his face and stayed. It didn't disappear within a few minutes, and it didn't hurt hiding in his mouth. Instead it was out there for anyone to see. It was odd, and he felt extremely vulnerable.

"You look like you're scared shitless," Dean told him bluntly.

"I'm just...I...I haven't," Adam stuttered, mindless of how his hands tangled in Dean's t-shirt, "I don't know why it's this hard for me."

"Being happy?"

"Yeah, I don't get it. I'm happy, and I want to smile so bad and it hurts, but I can't, and then when you were asking me earlier, and you were so close I forgot to breathe," Adam rambled, "who forgets to breathe? Isn't it involuntary? So we shouldn't forget, but I don't know what's wrong with me-"

"I dunno, either, kid, but we'll figure something out, and whatever it is, we'll fix it, alright?"

"Okay."

They were quiet for a moment, and Dean had pulled him closer again, and Adam felt warm and comfortable. Every time he felt a wave of euphoria like from earlier, instead of biting it back he let it show on his face, and he slowly relaxed, little by little. When he was almost boneless in Dean's arms, his brother's voice cut through the quiet making him jump.

"Wait, did you say you forgot to _breathe_?" Dean clarified, as if he'd just heard him.

"Huh? Yeah..."

"Why? And how do you do that?"

"I dunno...I was trying to hold back and you kept asking me things, and you were really close, and I couldn't think and answer questions and hold back at the same time and I guess I just stopped breathing...I didn't notice until you moved away and all my breath came out."

Dean didn't say anything to that, and instead held him tight. Adam shifted in his grip, assuming the same position that he'd woken up in earlier. It was strange finding Dean's collar bone through his shirt, but once he had, he curled his fingers around it, and Dean shivered reflexively. Adam's forehead fell forward a fraction of an inch and he could feel Dean's heartbeat.

"...comfortable, cuddles?"

Adam marveled at how the nickname didn't bother him at all, "Mmhmm."

Dean laughed, and Adam grinned without thinking.


	11. A Brief Reality Check

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 11 - A Brief Reality Check

Sam took his sweet time at the gas mart. He loitered and lingered, and he was tempted to return empty handed just to be spiteful. But all the same he got Dean's favorite candies, and several pies and walked out of the store with a heavy bag swinging at his side. He fell into the driver's seat of the impala, getting the same 'this isn't quite right' feeling he always got when he drove Dean's car. The bag of comfort-candy was sitting next to him and he idly tied the handles together to keep anything from spilling out and under the seat.

Sam wasn't sure he wanted to go back to the motel room. He knew that he was being a bit childish but at the same time he felt relatively justified in his resentment. When he was younger, once he'd reached the age of seven, Dean had stopped tolerating his attempts at affection. He was teased, shoved off, or entirely ignored whenever any attempt at closeness was made. To Dean, any want for such 'chick flick moments' was as lethal as the plague, and he would avoid it at all costs. When Sam locked up and drifted away as a result of this, Dean didn't notice or care either. But suddenly, now that Adam was going through the same thing, he was putting forth an effort? It all just seemed a bit hypocritical to Sam.

When he got back to the motel he entered quietly, and sure enough, his brothers, older and younger, were closely entangled and fast asleep. Sam tried to stifle the rustling of the plastic bag, and set it on the nightstand next to the bed for when Dean woke up. In the mean time, while his brothers took their nap, Sam decided to do the chores he would probably end up doing a few days later: filling more bullet casings with rock salt, cleaning the weapons and the impala, and even going on a dirty laundry run. He'd just finished with said laundry, having folded it and brought it back, when he noticed Dean had woken up. Adam was still softly snoring and wrapped up in Dean's arms. His older brother was reaching towards the nightstand and the bag containing his requested comfort food.

Sam distributed the clean clothing between the three dufflebags on the floor.

"Sammy, do me a favor and hand me that bag wouldja?"

"Dean it's not that far you can get it yourself," Sam retorted.

"But the kid's sleepin', and I don't wanna wake him up."

They were both whispering, and Sam was sorely tempted to start yelling, or even pick up the candy bag and drop it on the opposite bed. But he restrained himself and went over, untying the bag as quietly as he could and handing it to Dean who reached inside and started pulling out the various different candies and pies Sam had gotten him.

"Thanks man," Dean mumbled before popping a rolo into his mouth.

Sam didn't reply, flopping down on the free bed and trying to relax. A nap was starting to sound like a good idea. They still had a few hours to kill and he'd done all the chores. Mostly it was just a waiting game. They had their plan and it was a good one, if they jumped the gun they might ruin it.

"No," Dean whined, "dude, don't leave me alone. I'm bored just waiting around, I don't wanna be the only one awake."

Sam thought about getting out, going to a movie, maybe. He hadn't gone to a movie in months, maybe a year now. It's not like they really had lots of time. He wanted to get away from Dean so badly it was making his chest burn, but knowing he couldn't pinned him to the bed. If he got up now and left with no reasoning then Dean would know something was up and would ask him about it later.

"Fine, fine," Sam sighed, trying to ease an exasperated grin onto his face instead of a scowl, "what do you want to do?"

"I want you to turn on the TV and put it on mute, on the infomercial channel," Dean instructed.

Sam did as told and soon they were making up what the salesman was saying, or at least Sam was. Dean had them all memorized, he was the TV junkie of the family, and he imitated the guy on the TV, word for word. The whole time, he laid on his side, holding Adam, and keeping his head up so he could see the infomercial. Easily he could have rolled onto his back and piled the pillows against the headboard, leant back against them, and only had to move Adam the tiniest amount. But he stayed in that awkward position the entire time.

The hours passed and soon it was seven o'clock and time to put their plan into action. Dean seemed to realize this too because started sitting up and pulling away from their little brother. Adam whined sleepily and tried to nuzzle closer again but Dean shook him awake.

"C'mon, kid, it's time to go," Dean told him.

"Go where?"

"The bar, to get the necromancer bitch, you know, _our job_?"

"I'll just...go get Bobby," Sam offered lamely. He scooted awkwardly off the bed and left the room to try and avoid punching something, or _someone_.

* * *

Adam loved waking up in Dean's arms, but he hated that it always meant he had to let go a minute or so later. Dean was pulling away from him, but he was so comfortable. His mind was sluggish and still half asleep. His senses were all filled with his brother, his smell, the sound of his breathing, the feel of his heartbeat against his forehead, the taste of his t-shirt which he'd been nibbling on without thinking about it. He couldn't hold in a whine when his brother tried to move him, and he clung to him, moving closer. His legs spread so his knees were gripping to his sides, jabbing into his ribs.

Dean's voice told him it was time to go, he had to wake up, and suddenly he was being shaken. Adam's eyes opened blearily and he looked up, squinting at his brother's face, the t-shirt pulled from his mouth. It tasted horrible, but he wanted to hold onto it with his teeth. He asked Dean where they were going and he was reminded of what he was going to have to do. He had to go talk to Amanda again. He had to be the bait. Then they would catch her, find her altar, and that would be that. Easy as pie. He heard Sam leave, and then Adam turned back towards Dean.

"You gonna let go any time, kid?" Dean asked in what Adam privately called his 'warning voice.'

Adam nodded, and he peeled his fingers out from under Dean's collar where they'd been curled into the indent above his clavicle. When he looked up again Dean wasn't looking at him, he was staring over his shoulder, probably at the clock. So, Adam could stare at the stubble ridden jawline and quirked lips for an extra few minutes. Dean's eyes focused on him again, and he looked indignant.

"Dude, leggo," and like that he was shoved off.

Adam barely caught himself in time to not fall off the bed. He rolled over and sat himself up. He shook his head and decided that having Dean snap at him was an excellent remedy for light headedness.


	12. Male Specimen

**Note:** Lol, ok. So I read through chapter 12 the other day, and then looked at what I had for 13, and decided that I don't want Adam's 'abilities' to appear that fast or that obviously. Because the powers I want him to have, and the way I want them to work, need to appear slowly. I also looked at the story so far, and realized that I didn't have enough hinting at his abilities for it to be reasonable that they should so suddenly appear in full force in this chapter. So I'm going to keep easing them in. Also, I thought the way Amanda was dealt with was a little too easy. So you guys get a cliffhanger. *goes to work on chapter 13*

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 12 - Male Specimen

Adam was tracing the edges of the bruise on his swelling jawline. Dean had knocked him flat on the ground with one thoughtless punch nearly an hour ago, and it'd left a pretty purple and yellow mark on his face. Soon he fancied it'd be roughly the size and shape of an orange. The outline of it was well defined enough for him to run one idle finger over it and feel the sudden rise of tender skin. He liked his bruise already and thought about naming it until he figured that was probably unhealthy. So he circled it in his boredom, waiting for Amanda the pig-faced whore to show up so he could let her rile the fuck out of him and his brothers could come to the rescue. He privately hoped they kicked the ever loving shit out of her.

Lenny was locked up in the backseat of the impala because Dean hadn't wanted him getting distracted. That's what had ended in the punch because Adam had bothered to retort with something logical, how dare he. 'But Lenny will be hunting with us later on, why not get him used to it now?' Adam was beginning to get the impression from Sam that Dean had never been quite so quick to throw punches over things so trivial until Adam had joined them. He would yell and shout and berate, sure, but he didn't usually start swinging with his full weight behind his fists.

Adam noted that it was always that smirk that gave it away, the imminent pain or reprimand. The way his brother's lips would quirk up on just one side, and it would be smooth and quick and suddenly it would be replaced by steely eyes. Muscles and veins would stand out in sharp relief on his neck, and all Adam could focus on was how nice and soothing it was to curve his fingers around that collar bone. A fraction of a second later he would be lying flat on his back, stars exploding in front of his eyes, and his jaw clicking as he opened and closed his mouth like he had nothing better to do. But in that brief moment, two definitive lines made his fingers reflexively curl around nothing but air, and he didn't seem to care at all that he was going to get socked in the face for no good reason. His mind automatically told him that he probably deserved it.

"Can I get you a soda, kiddo?"

Adam looked up from the bar, finger still moving across his skin. Every time that he accidentally nudged into the sensitive and discolored flesh he twitched. It was like his hand was programmed to continuously move that way, he couldn't stop himself. He guessed he looked ten ways of mentally unstable, which was probably plenty accurate, but he didn't mind. Adam liked very much the way that Amanda's eyes narrowed in slight concern and how she didn't even bother trying to flirt with him. She forgot his soda though, so he reminded her politely and agreed whole-heartedly to her offer.

Amanda scowled, no longer bothering with pretense, and Adam figured she didn't try to impress lunatics. That was okay with him, he hated her a bit less when she didn't bother with being showy. He sipped at the soda given to him, leaning forward and still fiddling, his finger never altering in its course around the perimeter of his face-orange. He sucked in a few gulps of soda through the bendy straw.

"So here's the deal, rain man," Amanda told him, her voice low and choppy, "usually I'm a bit better at my game, I do more research. But I admit I was sloppy."

Adam didn't panic, but he was under the distinct impression that he should. He figured, idly, that if he were watching a movie of his life with subtitles on, they would be telling him that 'foreboding music' was playing. Amanda didn't seem to be striking the foreboding pose, though, mostly she just seemed exasperated with herself, mildly annoyed, as if she'd misplaced something.

"I just looked into you enough to know that you had some dead family members and you weren't too stable in the head so you'd be a safe bet as a customer, but I should have known," she shook her head, "you and those boys, it fit together when I had my pet follow you around. You're those Winchester boys they're always talking about in our world."

"What world?" Adam asked in between sips of soda, he just kept drinking it without thinking. He was almost done with the glass when Amanda answered.

"The world of hunters and all those things that people tell themselves aren't real," Amanda retorted.

"Ah."

"So, now that you've had your little drink, you're going to do everything I say, do you understand?"

"Yep."

That wasn't his voice. Was it? Why was he nodding? He hadn't intended to nod.

"And stop fidgeting with your bruise, already, it's annoying the crap out of me."

"Sorry." And his finger had stopped, his hands were folded neatly in his lap.

"Give me your gun, sweetheart?"

"Ok."

Adam reached behind his back and pulled his gun out of the waistband of his jeans and handed it to Amanda. She thanked him and handed it to the bartender. Adam could have sworn he saw his eyes flash yellow for just a minute, but then they were normal, and he gave him a friendly smile. Adam smiled back. But he was starting to get scared, and he wasn't sure where his brothers were.

"Do you have any other weapons on you?"

"I have a knife in my right boot."

"Hand it over?"

"Sure thing."

Adam reached into his right boot, pulled out the knife Dean had given him, and handed it over to Amanda. He didn't want to be doing these things. His words weren't even his own. If they were his, they would stew and simmer in his mouth for at least a few minutes before they were said. These answers he kept providing were quick and succinct, and he didn't even think about them.

"Let's go for a drive, I think that maybe under that boyish charm a man is hiding somewhere," Amanda's lips curled upwards into a smile that seemed nearly feral, and Adam blushed.

Amanda slipped off her bar stool and Adam felt himself do the same. She'd put his weapons into her purse and gave a polite nod to the bartender. Adam was trying to think over her words for any clue as to what the hell was going to happen to him. He'd taken her offer of a drink, that was dumb. It was beyond dumb. He could only imagine the hell Dean would give him later. The hell Sam and Bobby would give him too, this was the most retarded thing he'd done. Now he couldn't do anything but what she said. She seemed to be controlling him without saying the orders as well, and it was scaring him. He'd just offered her his arm and she took it without a word, she just smiled at him as if she were a prom queen and he was her king and weren't they just so gosh darn happy.

"Now don't spare your brothers a look, darling, they might think something's off-kilter," the sarcasm to her voice was biting and Adam flinched.

He didn't look, he couldn't, but the way they walked through the bar, Adam's eyes did manage to see Sam and Dean, who were staring at him as if he'd grown a second head. Adam tried to put as much feeling into his eyes as he could. This was just ridiculous. He wanted to scream. _HELP ME._ But then they were out of his sight and he was being led out of the bar. He heard their footsteps, but he also heard someone shout and then there was a lot of movement and it sounded like a fight had started up. He wished he could turn his head to see what was really going on.

"Oh, stop worrying, cutie, you're going to have fun with me," Amanda assured him, "you know, it's nice having a shifter for a pet, you can make them look whatever way you want them to. But when it comes down to it, it's just not the same as being with a human."

Adam liked sex as much as any other male specimen, but he didn't want to touch Amanda with a ten foot pole. He wanted to get away from her, he wanted to find his brothers. But he wasn't doing anything but what Amanda wanted him to do. She told him to get in the passenger seat of a slick black car that seemed all too familiar. Then he heard Lenny growling and he realized they were in the impala. Amanda set her hands on the wheel and practically purred.

"_Start_." That voice wasn't Amanda's, but it had come from her mouth and it sounded inhuman and terrifying and Adam was beyond confused when Dean's beloved car actually rumbled to life.

Then they were pealing out of the lot and Adam's eyes were glued to the road, and he couldn't think for himself anymore. His mind went blank, and he blinked. In that one moment when his eyes closed, an indeterminable amount of time passed, and when he opened them, he had no idea where he was.


	13. Just Live With It

**Note:** It's been a week, I'm sorry. D: But you get another cliff hanger. :3 I'm actually...kinda proud of this chapter. I hope you like it!

* * *

Family Business

Ch. 13 - Just Live With It

Dean had managed to dodge and weave through the melee inside, and was standing outside the bar. His eyes roamed over the entire parking lot and when he turned in the direction of the impala he saw it missing. A stream of curses flew out of his mouth and resonated through the evening air. Sam was right behind him suddenly and asking where the car had gotten off to.

"Where do you think, Sam?" Dean snapped, "That bitch must have taken it."

"Great."

"Yeah, just peachy."

Every word that left Dean's mouth was either loud and petulant or low and hateful. Sam told him he was gonna go find Bobby, and Dean plucked his cell out of his coat pocket to call Adam. It was never that easy but he thought he'd give it a try.

The phone rang a few times before going straight to voice mail and then Dean cursed again and almost threw his phone as far as he could. He restrained himself, just barely, and returned his cell to his pocket. He was about to pick a car, any car, and hotwire it when Sam appeared with Bobby. They were headed to Bobby's car and Dean followed, landing in the front seat and looking in the backseat to make sure his brothers were there, by habit. Of course only one brother was there because the other one was with the whore-bitch they were hunting down and would beat bloody.

"Alright, boys we have to focus, where could she be taking him?" Bobby was already pealing out of the lot, gravel spraying in every direction.

"I dunno, Bobby, we don't know anything about this skank, this wasn't supposed to happen!" Dean shouted.

"Calm down, idjit-"

"Some crazy necromancer-bitch has my baby brother, I am not going to calm down, don't you tell me to calm down!"

Bobby hit him over the head and before Dean could yell some more, cut him off, "You're wastin' air if you're not gonna try to think logically here, boy, so if you're not thinkin' answers, don't think at all."

Having words that he used himself frequently when talking to Sam was enough of reality check to keep him from snarling, but the agitation was still making Dean's skin crawl. He could think up plenty of ways to kill Amanda later, when they actually had her, and Adam was safe. Adam was his first priority.

"Well she has to be staying somewhere, there's only so many hotels in town," Sam offered.

"Yeah, there's like six, aren't there?"

"If she's a traveling saleswoman than her altar would have to be a temporary one, wherever she was staying."

"So, what, we go and search every room in every hotel in the area? The three of us?"

"Got any better ideas, Dean?"

"Yeah, how about an idea that leads us to Adam instead of this bitch's hoodoo!"

"Maybe Adam and the hoodoo are in the same place!"

"Like it's ever that simple, Sam!"

Bobby cut between them, "Shaddup, the both of ya. For one, it's not a bad idea, if we weren't so short for time."

"So what do we do, Bobby?"

"I say, this girl's rich, right? So she's probably staying at one of the nicer hotels, probably the most expensive one. We go to _that_ one and ask around to see what room she's staying at, and go there and bust the altar."

That shut up the two of them, and Dean was forced to stare out the window and fidget. The car just wasn't going fast enough, he wasn't getting to Adam fast enough. Who knew what Amanda was doing to him. Working dark magic on him, whatever spell she'd used had gotten him to walk with her calmly and easily out of the bar. He remembered the look in his brother's eyes as he'd been strolling towards the door with Amanda, he'd been terrified. Dean knew that statement lacked much shock value, fearful was Adam's default setting. But this was different. This wasn't 'oh my god I'm in trouble with my big brother' fear, this was 'oh my god I don't know what the fuck is happening, I'm being carted off by a dark magic user, help me!'

When they pulled up in front of the 'nicest' hotel in town, which probably cost no more than a hundred dollars per night, Dean flung himself out of the car and stormed towards the entrance. Sam and Bobby were quick to join him. Dean was ten shades of pissed off and he knew it showed on his face. When he charged over to the front desk and slammed his hands down on the counter he wasn't all that surprised that the receptionist leaped back a few steps.

Before he could get out the question he needed to ask, Bobby had peeled him away from the desk with a hand on his shoulder and was reassuring the man Dean had frightened. That doused the flames of his anger faster than anything because suddenly Dean could see Adam in the place of that startled idiot that Bobby was interrogating. Dean could just imagine how scared Adam would be if he had stomped towards him like that, and he ran a hand through his hair to try and keep the guilt at bay. As soon as a room number was provided Dean was sprinting for the stairs. The elevator would probably be faster but he didn't think he was capable of staying still that long when he knew where Adam might be.

Room 308, that was on the third floor. Dean was pelting himself up the stairs two at a time. When he was almost to the third floor he missed a step and fell, slamming his shin against one of the sharp concrete edges, barely catching himself. There would be bruises later and he hoped he hadn't cracked a bone, but he was up again in a second, continuing on his frantic rush. He figured Bobby and Sam had just taken the elevator, and who knows they may have gotten there before him.

Dean finally reached the third floor and was scanning the hall for room 308. He was mildly satisfied that his brother and Bobby had gotten there a minute or so after him, but then his mind was back at the task at hand. A sign directed him down the hall to the left and he was running again, his eyes reading numbers faster than his brain could probably process them. _302, 305, 306, 307, 308!_ Before Sam or Bobby could stop him, Dean had kicked the door open.

* * *

Adam wanted to struggle at the bindings on his wrists and ankles, but the spell was still in effect. He couldn't do anything that Amanda didn't want him to. They were in a house that she'd bought pre-furnished, just for that week. Money was meaningless to her, she probably had millions and millions to roll in. What was a few hundred thousand for a hotel all to yourself? When she needed to check out, she just put the place on the market and usually, after some quick remodeling she always made a profit off of the deal. Adam hoped that his brothers would get a clue and find him soon. He had no idea how long this spell would last and he was tired of not being able to anything but what Amanda told him to.

"Alright, baby, what do you think?"

Amanda stood just inside the doorway to the master bathroom, dressed in a lacy black teddy. The light framed her and made her look more like a shadow, and the pair of sewing shears in her right hand made the sight only a tad more creepy than it was arousing. Still, he could see just enough detail that his body reacted against his will. The way her breasts were lower set, and her crow's feet stood out under the makeup she'd been wearing all day, showed her age. But even so, she was more than attractive enough to make him wonder if it would be so bad to do whatever she wanted. He hoped that was just the spell, but as she strode towards the bed, her hips swaying, and her eyes locked with his, Adam knew that it wasn't. She was definitely what his brother Dean would call a 'cougar.'

Adam could only stare at her as she climbed smoothly onto the bed and straddled him. She took her scissors to his shirt, cutting it off of him slowly, the blades hitching on the fabric if she tried to speed up. Adam was slightly disappointed, he'd liked that shirt a lot. But then she'd cut through the sleeves too and tugged it out from under him, throwing it to the floor. Amanda set the scissors beside them on the bedspread and she slid herself forward so she was lying on top of him, her face inches from his.

"You know, it's really too bad I have to kill you," she told him in a voice that sounded genuinely remorseful, "you would have been a lot of fun, a good pet."

"What do you mean?" he asked, because she didn't say he couldn't.

"Well, I do need a live sacrifice every once in a while, to keep my master happy," Amanda explained, "and I also need more blood, and bones, and organs and things. I always could just buy those on the black market, or steal some cadavers from the hospital but it's just not the same as when it's fresh."

Her tone was so light and casual, that the words didn't sound nearly as heinous as he knew they were. Adam wanted to turn away, but didn't when she leaned in and kissed him. He didn't want to be here, he wanted his brothers and his uncle to come get him. Adam screwed his eyes shut and screamed inwardly, wishing he could at the least get one arm free from his bindings so he could wrench Amanda off of him. When he didn't respond to her ministrations, she broke the kiss and told him to play along. He did, because she told him to. Then, when she had drawn the edges of the shears across his skin, leaving tiny red cuts, he didn't cringe. Instead he has asked her quite pleasantly if she could do it again, because she told him that he liked it.

* * *

When Dean entered the room he saw Adam tied to the hotel bed, and rushed to his side. Sam went into the bathroom and Bobby closed the door behind them. Sam announced that there was no Amanda, and then they started ripping the place apart looking for an altar.

"Kid, you okay? You're okay, right?"

"I'm fine, Dean, did you find her?" Adam answered.

Dean looked down at Adam from where he was cutting the rope around his baby brother's wrists. This wasn't right. Adam wasn't acting like himself. The way the kid thought made no sense to Dean, but he'd gotten used to it. If this was his brother, then he would have been apologizing, his expression blank, hiding the fear he was feeling at having possibly made Dean angry. But Adam was glaring up at him, looking impatient and infuriated at having been tied up. Dean pulled away from him, jaw clenching.

"Where are they?"

"What are you talking about, Dean? If you're asking about the altar, it isn't here, that bitch and her pet tied me up and left me here so they could escape!"

Bobby and Sam stopped what they were doing and looked between Dean and 'Adam'. Dean could feel the realization dawning for his adopted-father, and his brother. They were thinking the same thing.

"What pet?"

"Untie me!" Adam yelled, face going red, and that's when his eyes flashed gold, and Dean punched him across the face.

"Where did she take him? Where's my brother?!" Dean roared.

"I _AM_ your brother!"

"No you're not, you're not him, now tell me where they are or I'll be carving you up with a silver knife until you do," Dean threatened, pleased when the shape shifter appeared mildly intimidated.

"If you cut out this stupid binding seal I'll tell you everything," 'Adam' promised, pleading, "I'm tired of working for her, doing everything she says!"

"Where?"

"On my chest, just below the shirt collar."

Dean cut the shirt off the monster and instantly saw the 'seal' that it was talking about. It was burned and tattooed into its flesh, the burn having been the temporary fix and the ink binding it further. Dean took out his knife and wedged it under the shape shifter's skin, and tried not to be sick as he quickly cut down to the muscle, removing the seal entirely. The creature grunted and hissed at the pain, but Dean knew that it went through even worse every time it shed, so this was probably nothing.

"Now-"

"They're in a house that whore bought for while she was in town, it's over in the richer neighborhood closer to the golf course, NW Emerald Ct., house number 4235" it told them, "you better hurry, she's planning on using him as a sacrifice after she's done toying with him."

Dean was almost out the door when the creature called, "Wait! Be careful, she's put him under a spell so that he has to do anything she says. She'll probably have him attack you!"

Dean wasn't really worried about having to fight his baby brother. The brat was barely half of Sam's weight, and most of it might be muscle, but his ribs still stuck out like he was a skeleton. He'd be out in a few hits. Bobby stayed behind to deal with the shape shifter, tossing the car keys to Dean. Then him and Sam were out the door hurrying down to the parking lot.


	14. Pretty Pathetic

**Notes:** This is pretty sadly short. And it's like, a month later? Wow wtf. o.o Sorry guys. Anyways, here you are. I still remember this story, haven't forgotten. I'm glad we've gotten out of this particular case-file story arc. u3u it was driving me crazy. I've got another few lined up to keep the story moving. For now, have this! :3

* * *

Family Business

Chapter 14 - Pretty Pathetic

When they pulled up in front of the house, Dean was nonplussed when it appeared perfectly ordinary. It blended in well with the other half-million-dollar-houses lining the street. Crisp, well-manicured lawn, and a spotless paint job on the house. The neighborhood couldn't have been put up but a year ago, Dean could practically smell the newness of the place. The impala wasn't in the driveway, but Dean hoped that it would be in the garage.

Dean went ahead and picked the lock on the front door, figuring that kicking it open would cause too much noise. He didn't want to give that bitch any chance to prepare for them. Once inside, he sent Sam to look for the garage, and consequently his baby. Dean busied himself with searching the first floor, and after finding nothing, he headed up to the second. He'd thought he'd heard voices up there, as muffled as they were in a frivolously large home like this one. How anyone could live in a house this big boggled Dean, especially if they lived there alone. He could see it if there were like, six kids or something, a giant clan of a family that needed the space. But this was just a waste in his mind.

The voices grew in volume, and Dean crept down the hall, wishing he had his gun. In his panic back at the bar, when the fight had started up, he'd pulled it out only to have it lost in the commotion. All he had to his name was a knife tucked into his boot and one in his belt. He felt naked without it, especially as he knew he was about to face an experienced necromancer who was powerful enough to bind a shifter to her will. He turned a corner and saw light coming out from beneath a door at the far end of the hall. The voices grew louder, and Dean could hear Amanda's, but not Adam's. She was speaking to someone, probably her master, and already Dean knew he was in over his head. Just great.

Dean closed in on the room, listening before he barged in. It wasn't something he usually did, Sam being the one to think ahead. But this time, he knew he had to play it safe. Suddenly though, Amanda's smooth and calm voice changed to one of panic, and she was screaming. Dean decided that it was okay then for him to bust in, whatever was going on in there wasn't in Amanda's favor.

Once he was inside, Dean's eyes searched for Adam, he saw two of him, one on the bed, and the other with his hand around Amanda's throat, strangling her. Dean went for the Adam tied up on the bed. That bitch was getting exactly what she deserved, but he was only mildly disappointed that he wasn't the one that got to do the deed. All the same he was thoroughly relieved to find his baby brother all in one piece, if not a bit cut up. Dean didn't want to think about how or why all the myriad of cuts on his brother had gotten there. A minute later and Amanda's lifeless body was lying on the floor and the shifter was smirking down at her. It wasn't until Dean started freeing Adam from his bindings that the creature acknowledged them.

"Thank you," it said to them, "for letting me go."

"Don't mention it. You might wanna get outta town though, settle down somewhere else before some other hunter finds you whose little brother you didn't help save," Dean suggested firmly, and the shifter nodded, not having to be told twice. It disappeared out the window a moment later, leaving Dean alone with cuddles.

"Did you find the car?" Adam was spluttering at him, "I'm so sorry, let me go, hurry, I gotta go find it-"

Dean was working on getting the rope around Adam's ankles undone when he looked up at him incredulously, "Jeez, kid, she's _my_ car, and even I'm not that worried."

That was a lie, he was that worried, now that he knew Adam was safe, but he wasn't about to let on. He had to keep his game face on for Sammy—_Adam_. Cuddles, brat, kiddo, the baby, the youngest. Dean faltered at the slip, not having made it before and feeling disoriented. He wanted to say that the emotion tangling about in his intestines was guilt, but that wasn't quite right either. He let it go, shrugging.

Sam appeared in the room then, followed by a familiar puppy who was barking and growling ferociously at Amanda's corpse. He threw the keys to the impala towards Dean who barely caught them, slipping them into his coat pocket.

"You okay, Adam?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, is that Lenny?"

"Yep, he was still going crazy in there, by the way, nearly chewed my ankle down to the bone when I let him out," Sam laughed. He picked up the little brute and set him down on the bed next to Adam.

Dean snorted, rolling his eyes, "Seems like you picked a good hunting dog after all, cuddles."

"Yeah," Adam held the suddenly far more agreeable Lenny in his lap and looked to Sam, "he didn't make a mess in there did he?"

"Nope, not that I could tell. Didn't smell or see anything in there."

Adam's whole body relaxed instantly and Dean realized why his brother was so worried about finding the impala. This was what the shifter had been missing when they'd found it, tied up at the hotel. Before Adam would consider anything else, he was ultimately worried about somehow getting in trouble with Dean, about having been a burden by being taken like this. As soon as he was completely untied, Dean reached forward and took Adam's bare shoulders in his hands and shook him roughly.

"Kid, you really gotta work on that one track mind of yours," Dean scolded lightly, not wanting to cause more harm than good.

Adam ignored him and was saved from having to reply by Sam who was eying Amanda's dead body, "What happened here anyways?"

"Bobby's an awesome babysitter as it turns out, the shifter got here before us and killed her," Dean answered.

Sam laughed, but Dean didn't find the situation all that funny. If the shifter had turned out to really have some sort of loyalty to Amanda, then Dean and Adam definitely would have been screwed. A shifter, unbound, and a powerful necromancer both on their own turf? They would have been killed embarrassingly fast.

"Now all we gotta do is torch the altar and get the hell outta town," Dean told them, standing up wearily.

Sam shook his head, "Nope, already got the altar handled."

"I was wondering what was taking you so long," Dean admitted, rolling his eyes.

Adam slid off the bed with Lenny, and grabbed at the cut up shirt on the floor. He wrapped Lenny in the cloth and looked to his brothers, as if waiting for instructions. Dean jerked his head towards the door and easily his younger brothers fell into line, walking out before him, Dean following.

Once they all made it down to the garage, Dean plucked his cell out of his pocket and dialed Bobby's number.

"Is the kid okay?" Bobby always got straight to the point, not even a 'hello.'

Dean looked towards Adam who was clutching Lenny to his chest and looking entirely blank and jumpy as usual. He was probably worrying and stressing over having gotten himself kidnapped and generally 'not okay', but physically he was safe and sound, and that's what Bobby was really after.

"He's fine, the wicked witch is dead, oh and Sam and I are okay too, by the way, thanks for askin'," Dean threw in a bit of smart-mouth just because he knew it was expected.

"You boys are fine, I knew you would be, it's the baby that's a wild card these days," Bobby scolded, "did that shifter take her out?"

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, good job keeping an eye on it."

Sam was getting jumpy from not having left, and Adam was more and more giving the impression that he'd misplaced his shattered mind. Dean asked Bobby where he was and discovered he was already back at the motel, having taken a cab a little while after the shifter had 'gotten away' as he was putting it, before hanging up and handing out orders.

"Sam, you take the kid and pup back to the motel in Bobby's car, wouldja? I wanna have some time with my baby, ya know, since she's been defiled by that bitch and all-"

"Yeah whatever, Dean," Sam rolled his eyes, "c'mon Adam."

The garage door opened slowly and Sam was all too eager to escape, as he ducked under it, nearly bending himself in half. Adam followed, glancing nervously at Dean, Lenny yipping impatiently in his arms. As soon as Dean made sure his little brothers were safely tucked away into Bobby's old junker car and driving off down the road, he fell into the driver's seat of the impala.

Dean had really intended to send Sam back to the motel with Bobby's car, and taken Adam with him in the impala. If there was one thing he was finally starting to learn about that kid, was that if you acted fast, and resolved the problem before it had time to stew and fester, then you had at least _some_ hope of fixing it. Once it was left alone too long, then Adam would be far too set in his thoughts and it'd be a lost cause. But Dean could tell that Sam was getting jealous of all the sharing and caring that he'd been doing with their brother, and he wanted to cut it off before it got out of hand. He'd always been able to read Sam like an open book. The way he was brooding was angry, not sullen.

Dean pulled out of the garage, leaving it open as he tore down the road and out of the neighborhood. He'd just have to find another way to corner Adam and make him talk.


	15. Whose head were you in?

Family Business

Chapter 15 - Whose head were you in?

Adam was fast becoming an expert on how to avoid Dean. He knew that his older brother was gunning for another therapy session. It was odd because as far as Adam could tell, when Sam was brooding, Dean left him well enough alone. In fact, Adam was pretty certain that Dean hated sharing and caring, he dreaded the moment where feelings and issues would have to be brought out into the open for consideration and resolution. But when it came to Adam, Dean sought out those emotional conversations and it just made Adam awkward. Not only was it embarrassing, but Adam wasn't ever sure what might end up pissing Dean off.

Adam strongly recalled that long summer he'd spent at his 'Uncle' Bobby's, in what his brothers still referred to as 'hunter boot camp'. Bobby had thwacked Adam over the head during that summer enough times whilst uttering the phrase 'damn you stubborn Winchesters!' for it to stick in his memory. Clearly, Winchester men were stubborn bastards, and if he could admit to having inherited _anything_ from his Dad then perhaps it was his stubbornness. After all, Adam was quite stubbornly resisting Dean's attempts to get him to talk. He was determined to evade his efforts, and that's where Sam came in.  
Sam was an excellent shield. Dean wouldn't dare try anything while Sam was there because if he was, the middle Winchester would defend Adam's right to be as repressed and blank as he wanted. Dean would retort back with something about it being thoroughly unhealthy, and on the argument would go until eventually Adam wasn't the subject anymore and he could escape somewhere and hide. So Adam stuck to Sam like crazy glue.

At the moment they were driving through Texas with the goal of eventually reaching Louisiana. Sam had practically pleaded with Dean to drive around the forsaken state which ended up with the two of them bickering all the way through New Mexico: _"Why in the hell would we drive around, Sam? It would add at least two days to our trip that would be completely pointless!" "Because it's hot, Dean, and gross, and it takes a whole fuckin' day to drive through Texas anyways!" "Hmm, one day versus four with mildly less disgusting weather-" "Oh fuck you, Dean, you know I can't stand the heat." "I've been telling you that your whole life..."_

And so it went, for hours, and Adam had curled up in the backseat with the fast food garbage, abandoned jackets and sweat soaked t-shirts, and Lenny. Curling up with Lenny these days was becoming a challenge. He'd been bigger than a seven year old terrier when he was three months old, and now at four and a half months he was roughly the same size as a golden retriever. The growth spurt was ridiculous, but Adam was managing. He wouldn't dare complain for fear of Dean taking him away.

As it turned out, Sam wasn't exaggerating. It really did take all day to drive through Texas. They'd stopped the night before in a motel flirting with the corner of New Mexico, and that morning at six Dean had dragged them out of bed and into the impala. It was nearly two in the afternoon and they were only half way through.

Adam had gotten very used to Sam's tendency to exaggerate things and make them sound worse than they usually were. So when Sam had complained of the heat in the lone star state, Adam had expected it to be unpleasant, but not too bad. For once, of course, Sam wasn't lying. The heat was sinful, and the sun oppressive. Even though Dean's baby was rocketing down the uneven freeway at a speed that was probably unsafe, the wind blasting through the windows didn't offer any respite. It was merely another annoyance.

Adam had heard the same songs too many times, and having thrown his shirt onto the floor like his brothers had, his sweat sticky skin was one with the leather seat. He was lying on his side, and Lenny was straddling him, a heavy, warm blanket. He would put Lenny on the floor if it wasn't so disgusting that he'd feel bad.

"You still alive back there, kiddo?" Dean's voice yelled over the thrum of the engine, the music, and the wind.

"Yep," he answered.

"Start looking around for some shirts back there, we'll be stopping for lunch soon."

"Okay."

Adam shoved himself upright, dislodging Lenny for a moment. Then he was flopped down again on the seat beside him, his chest rising witheringly in the heat. He felt a twinge of pity go out to his dog for being stuck with black fur in this kind of heat. Barely cringing, he dug around for clothing. They really needed to clean out the backseat soon. Finding the ones they'd been wearing earlier, he sorted out his from Dean and Sam's and then dropped his brothers' shirts in between them on the front seat.

Dean turned down the music and Adam looked frantically to Sam only to find him completely passed out, leaning up against a partially rolled up window. _Oh great..._

"How's Lenny doing?" Dean asked guardedly. Adam must have let some of his panic show on his face, if only for a second, because Dean was tense and treading cautiously.

"He's okay," Adam replied evenly, "I feel bad for him though, cuz he's all black and it's not like he can change out of his fur, so the heat must be really hard on him."

"I know, maybe when we stop we should try and get some ice packs for him, hell, get some for us too."

"That sounds good, I don't want him to get heat stroke or something."

Dean smirked suddenly, chuckling, "Well, we wouldn't have to worry about using a fake name when we took him to the vet, unlike us, Lenny's not on any of the feds' lists."

Adam's lips twitched and he thought _oh to hell with it_ before he allowed himself a full-on smile. He was too tired and hot to bother. He crossed his arms and rested them on top of the front seat. Dean looked smug now, though, which took the grin away easier than anything. Adam's face went blank, but Dean's didn't.

"So, how terrified of me are you now that it's been a few weeks, huh?"

"Not at all." Adam's voice wavered, and it was obvious enough he was lying that Dean didn't have to point it out.

"Yeah, yeah," Dean grumbled, "you know, avoiding heart-to-heart's is _my_ thing. At least with Sam, he wants to tell me what's wrong, and when he doesn't, it isn't too hard to figure out. You, on the other hand..."

Adam felt suddenly more frustrated than fearful, and it showed through the sudden absence of fidgeting and the dead look in his eyes when he met Dean's in the rear view mirror.

"Nothing's wrong, Dean. I'm okay. You keep trying to fix something that's not broken, so yeah, I've avoided this chat because you just keep looking when nothing's there, and it gets old, okay?" Adam told him with more surety in his words than he really felt, "and even if there was, it wouldn't be your fault or your responsibility to make it better."

"It's always my job to make it better, I'm your big brother," Dean retorted, "and I know you've lived the majority of your life without one, but tough shit, this is what it's like to be looked after."

Adam wondered if maybe he should just tell Dean the truth. He wasn't sure how much good that would do because it hadn't changed much since the last time he told him. Dean was a mystery to Adam, and he got angry fast and scary and Adam didn't want to mess around with that. He knew he was the odd one out, the half-sibling that they never knew who got the life they always wanted but never had. He was a thrown together, piss-poor hunter who had no right to be doing their job and he knew that at any minute they could just leave him to fend for himself and he would deserve it.

All in all, it was just easier to avoid Dean's anger if he put up and shut up and did what he was told and put forth every effort in everything he did. But somehow that still made him mad because Dean didn't want Adam to be a 'good little soldier' as he had once said. Adam remembered that conversation, or rather, scolding. As soon as the reprimand had left his lips, Dean had turned very pale, shaken his head, and stormed out of the motel room leaving Adam alone with a very awkward Sam. Neither of his brothers had ever bothered to explain the significance of that phrase and Adam figured they never would.

"Dean, I...I'll talk, I swear I will, as soon as we're out of this state, as soon as we're done driving and we find a motel with air conditioning, I'm just...I'm just as fried as you are, okay?" Adam felt like a compromise was the best way out of this awkward moment, and with any luck Dean would forget all about this by the end of the day.

Dean stared at him in the rear view mirror, a look of determination on his face, "I'm going to hold you to that."

And Adam's hope went out the window.

* * *

They pulled over in a little town made for passing through half an hour later. It had a gas station, a cheap motel, and an even cheaper diner. Those were the only things the Winchesters needed, but Adam took into account that there was a little white church with a steeple and a bell, and a string of farms and little cookie cutter houses that ran along a single dirt road. The town couldn't have had more than two hundred people and over half of them related to each other. Adam had always wondered what it would be like to live in that sort of town.

The cacti that stood tall and guarding near the door to the diner nearly poked Adam's eye out and would have if Sam hadn't pulled him away in time. The blast of air conditioning was as strong as if he'd walked into a freezer but it was more than welcome. Lenny was trudging in at his side, and one look at his slack, half lidded face and the waitress let him sit next to the table. She even brought out a bowl of ice water for him which he lapped up greedily, sloshing droplets onto the scummy linoleum around it.

Sam sat next to him on one side of the booth while Dean slothfully took up the whole other side. He'd rolled his sleeves up tight around his muscled shoulders and leaned up against the wall, legs stretched out over the seat cushion. Sam on the other hand was wearing a sweat soaked wife beater, and Adam figured they must have switched shirts because Dean's was too loose across his shoulders, and Sam's was too tight. Adam eventually decided to roll up his sleeves as well, though it made little difference and the air conditioning was cooling him off quite nicely. He didn't want to look like the odd one out even though he knew he did anyways.

The booths had low enough backs that Adam could see to the other end of the diner and Dean could hang his arm over the top without stretching much. The diner was full of patrons, mostly families but also a few good ol' boys that were eyeing the three of them none too subtly from under the brims of their ten gallon's. Adam could only imagine the spectacle they made. Withering like pansies in the heat that was no doubt usual to them, and Dean in his biker boots and flare jeans, Sam the giant bookworm, and Adam who just wouldn't stop shaking, though he only noticed it when he was in public like this. Adam thought they might get lynched if they stayed in this town too long.

A waitress came moseying up to them, her slim hips swaying too much for it to be anything other than intentional. She was pudgy at the middle, and hadn't been endowed with large enough breasts to compensate for it, but her face had a simple sort of beauty, and her hair was thick and black and tossed up in an oil stained blue handkerchief. Adam could see the muscle tone in her arms and the calluses on her hands, but he could also feel the insecurity and false confidence wafting off of her. He also caught a bit of worry that seemed like an afterthought pinned away in the back of her mind like a reminder and he wondered what it could be about.

"...Kiddo, you with us?"

Adam jumped when Dean snapped his fingers in his face to gather his attention. His brothers had already ordered and Adam snapped that he'd be fine having just water, thanks. She gave him not a second look before sashaying away to the kitchen to get their food started. Adam knew there was a glare waiting for him when he turned back to look at his older brother but he didn't want to see it so instead he surveyed the rest of the diner's occupants.

Something had started happening to him ever since they'd left the last case in their rear view mirror. Adam had thought that maybe it was just his own feelings overwhelming him from too much repression. It made sense enough, more than what he was starting to believe anyways. But his unruly emotions even when they did butt heads and finally emerge, had never felt like this. This was picking up on the maelstrom of feeling around him, from other people. He was usually so closed off he didn't catch more than a drift, but when he'd really opened himself up, creaking the door open in a crowded place like he usually only did when he was alone, it was like having a thumb jabbed through his forehead into his brain. Suddenly he could pick up on all sorts of emotions: anger, jealously, worry, happiness, arousal, guilt, etc.

Adam kept the door firmly shut on his mind after that, and now only opened it up intentionally and definitely when he was alone. Sometimes though, he couldn't help it and it unlocked and swung forth on its own, like with the waitress...Celia was her name, the curiosity got to him. But he couldn't read thoughts, just feelings, so he wouldn't know what she was worrying about unless he asked her.

Lazily, as though he were tossing out a fishing line at the lake near Bobby's house, Adam cast around for the mental state of the other people in the restaurant. There was a woman a few booths down who had a nagging child prodding at her arm while an older woman opposite shushed them gently. She was staring despondently out the window, and when Adam focused in on her he got hit with such a strong wave of grief he slammed the door shut and turned his gaze out the window too, mimicking her without thinking about it. He took a few moments before dredging back towards her, and then he only peeked in a bit, scooting around the despair as much as possible to see what else was there. Guilt, worry, and fear, so much fear that seemed to be huddled close to the sadness that took center stage, toppling her equilibrium and shutting down most of her system. Adam turned to the child then and found nothing but confusion and more worry, worry for the woman next to him, and frustration at being ignored.

Adam turned next to the older woman, he guessed might be the sad one's mother, and the child's grandmother. She too was filled with worry and a more muted sadness that took the shape of pity when Adam looked closer at it. It felt a lot like sifting through their dirty laundry when they rolled into the local laundromat. One article at a time, and they were so tangled and worn that he had to pull them apart slowly. His head was aching dully by the time Adam had wanted to head on to another group of people.

Their waitress, Celia passed them to deliver the meals of the family he'd intruded on a moment ago, and Adam threw his focus onto her to see if he couldn't muddle through the inner workings of her other feelings to look more closely at the worry hidden in the back. But her feelings were slippery like an eel in the water and he couldn't get a hold of them. His head was hurting too so he couldn't get a firm grasp for too long before he had to take a break and simply breathe.

When she went by them again to handle another table Dean stopped her and asked her if she could still serve waffles that late in the day.

"Yeah, course, it might take a bit longer to get the griddles heated up again, but sure, you wanna add those on?"

"Yeah, and some eggs and bacon, and a side of sourdough toast, and some coffee, black," Dean told her, and as soon as she'd jotted it down on her pad of paper she was down the aisle and out of reach of Adam's intrigue. It didn't matter though because a minute later and Dean was center stage and demanding attention like the petulant toddler a few tables away.

"When that shows up, you're eating it."

"...what?" Adam's gaze slid slowly onto Dean's drill-sergeant face. He snapped to full alertness when he saw the familiar expression, and when Dean started to speak again, he made sure he listened.  
"When she brings out those waffles you're going to eat them."

Adam nodded, "Yessir."

Dean's expression crumbled, and Adam didn't even notice himself opening up and throwing a line across the table to his brother, and all of a sudden he was overwhelmed by fear, guilt and worry, and a defeated sort of frustration. Adam hoisted himself back in confusion and hid behind his comfortably thick and locked door and he kept it shut for the rest of the meal. He was too sore, and now worried, to do any more digging. That didn't meant his brothers didn't do some of their own, of course.

That woman with the staggering grief was named Tracy and her husband had passed not too long ago. Maybe a week. He'd gone into the hospital a town over for a routine surgery. The next night he'd died in his sleep. No warning, no nothing, and there was no cause to be found. The doctors were taking their time with the autopsy, calling it a medical mystery. Then a week later, a twelve year old boy had gone to the same hospital with a case of buckshot, accident from him and a friend messing around with their dads' guns. The surgery had gone smoothly, and when he woke up everything was looking good, everything stable, though he had seemed a bit rattled. The next night he too had died in his sleep with no explanation to be found.

It was amazing what you could hear in conversation floating around a restaurant, and what more you could find out when you were Dean Winchester and you flirted just enough with the waitress. The reminder worry made sense now, Adam realized, that woman who'd lost her husband was Celia's oldest sister. When his waffles arrived, Adam ate them as he'd been told to, and he ate the bacon and the toast and the eggs. He even drank the coffee though he hadn't been particularly in the mood for it.

As it turned out Celia's best friend worked the front desk over at the motel, and when Dean decided they were staying there to check things out, he asked her to call ahead for them. She herded them out of the diner when they were done eating and told them that a room would be waiting for them.

"You really think something's going on here, Dean? We know for sure that there's a haunting in Louisiana, Ellen put us on the job," Sam asked as they headed for the impala.

Adam didn't even had to tell Lenny, his dog just scampered over to one of the small scrub bushes and started doing his business. He was glad because he was too tired to think.

"Sam, c'mon, you don't think this is weird? Two deaths with no clear cause, both at the same hospital in two weeks?"

"People die in hospitals all the time, Dean."

"And yet we keep giving them our business," Dean grumbled, "but that just gives all the reason in the world for a haunting."

"There are so many spirits in hospitals, Dean, there's a reason we don't usually take hospital cases."

"Okay, Sam, you know what, lemme try this a different way," Dean pulled himself up to his full height, which was still two heads shorter than Sam, and put on the most riled, stubborn face he had in him and said, "I really don't want to get back on the road, so I'm staying at the motel. If you want to keep going, you can hitchhike. Tomorrow, we're heading over to that hospital and checking things out."

Sam seemed partially relieved but mostly irked by the tone in Dean's voice, and Adam couldn't blame him. He'd be annoyed too if he wasn't wired to submit and comply whenever he heard that tone. They fell into the car and drove down the dusty road to the motel to check in for the night. There was very little to be done at the front counter except offer over their latest credit card and get the key, as Celia had in fact called ahead for them.

When they'd slouched in and deposited all of their things Sam begged off for first shower, leaving the two of them quite alone. Adam would have bitched at that if his brain didn't shut down the want before it was even fully developed. Whining was a no-no. Dean scrawled out some crap note about the two of them going to get more beer from the gas mart down the road before dragging Adam out of the room and back to the impala, leaving Lenny in the room. Adam wished he could have brought Lenny but thought that he deserved to be relaxing in the air conditioned room.

They were in the car and driving in the opposite direction of the gas mart, more towards the middle of nowhere than anything. Dean had chosen to follow that old dirt road past all the houses out towards the desert and patchwork crop fields that looked so out of place. He ended up finding a tree somehow with just enough foliage to provide shade for them to stew in, and Dean parked next to it. He cut the engine and curled the keys into the palm of his hand. Without saying anything, he merely looked at Adam, waiting.

"I think there's something wrong with me," Adam started, and before Dean could snort derisively he added, "and not the usual stuff, something...something weirder."

"...Weirder?" Dean cringed and managed to raise an eyebrow at the same time. He looked like he had something sour in his mouth.

Adam didn't want to talk about how improperly wired his mind was when it came to his own personal feelings. He didn't want to talk about this weird ability of his either but it seemed the better of the two options, and he'd be confessing _something_, which would be better than nothing and maybe Dean would get off his case for a while.

And so Adam explained it all, even starting with what happened with Linda, the waitress he'd thought he'd hurt somehow. It didn't seem connected to the sudden empath trip he had going on, but that was around the time it all started, so he mentioned it. When Dean stopped him to ask why he'd been so mad at her, Adam blushed reflexively, but mumbled that he didn't really know, which was the truth. Dean didn't seem anxious to know the reason either, so he let it drop. By the time Adam had finished explaining himself he felt exhausted and like he never wanted to talk again.

For a while after he stopped talking, Dean didn't say anything. They'd been out there a while and no doubt Sam had long been out of the shower and being as apt as he was, had figured out that Adam had been abducted for sharing and caring time.

"Well..." Dean stopped there for a stretch of time just long enough for Adam to crawl into his own head and hide in there, "that's...definitely weirder."

Adam had expected something more along the lines of bafflement, repulsion, or fury, but stating the obvious worked for him too. He could roll with that.

"I don't know what it is with you two and your weird freaky powers but I guess we should have you checked out anyways," Dean grumbled, and Adam's ears perked up at that. His mouth betrayed his want for no more talking and he blurted out something unintelligent like 'whosawhatnow?'

"Sam...well, um, it's a long story, but he had some jedi mind tricks of his own before you came into the picture and it was because of something bad in his blood, so we should get you checked out to see if it's the same thing."

It was amazing how a garbled answer like that could bottom out Adam's stomach so easily. There were times like these, when Adam remembered just how very little he knew about his big brothers and his family history in general. Sure he knew about the hunting now, and in theory knew how to get the job done. But that was nothing compared to this little gem of information, and it was the spark notes version to boot.

"Hey, look at me kiddo," Dean put a hand on the back of his neck and steered Adam's head so that he was forced to look at him. His skin underneath Dean's hand tensed and crawled and he kept trying to hunch his shoulders instinctively, but Dean held him still.

"There is a very, _very_ small chance that this is what I think it is, okay? So I want you to stop worrying now."

Adam was still sort of really worrying. But Dean was giving him that look like he meant business and he would call on the Winchester stubbornness and refuse to let this go. Adam felt awkward doing this when the person knew that he could, but he wasn't sure if they could feel it or not, so he gave it a shot anyways. He wanted to know that Dean was as confident in his words as he sounded. Adam reached out tentatively and ghosted over his brother to get an idea of what he was feeling. Confidence was at the forefront, and next to it was determination, and both felt distinctly Dean. Next to it was worry, and he wasn't sure how, but Adam could just _tell_ that it wasn't about Adam possibly having this bad blood thing, but about Adam being scared, about him being okay. Somewhere in the back was a protectiveness and a nurturing so strong that everything in him relaxed and he wanted to lean into the feeling, curl up there and let it wash over him completely.

"Hey, Cuddles, you there?" the protectiveness surged forth and with it a spike of worry that jolted Adam more awake and he blinked, pulling all the way back into his own head and slamming the door shut.  
Adam found himself back in the impala and all of that comfort was gone, and Dean's hand was still on his neck and it was making him itch.

"I'm here," he croaked, wondering why his voice was hoarse.

"Whose head were you in? Mine or yours?"

Adam could tell that was supposed to be a joke to lighten the mood but Adam ended up answering truthfully, "Yours."

Dean blinked, and his face screwed up into something that looked like awkward and Adam apologized immediately, "I shouldn't have, I'm sorry, I just...I know you say things to make Sam and I feel better sometimes even if you don't really know they're true and I...I had to know."

Dean relaxed, "And?"

"And you weren't lying."

Dean nodded, "Good," before adding, "Hey, so, you don't get just one feeling when you're looking around in there, do you?"

Adam shook his head, "No, I get a few, sometimes a lot. Background feelings, and sometimes if I look hard enough I can see who they're aimed at, or what other feeling they're connected to."

Dean was quiet for a while, and he started up the impala, steering her towards the road. When he was settled into the rhythm of driving he said, "If I get mad at you, I want you to dig around in my head, and look past the anger, okay?"

Adam hesitated a moment but forced out, "...okay."

"You know, being able to tell if a person is lying by rooting around in their heads could be pretty handy in our line of work, you know."

Adam laughed, "Yeah."

When they pulled up to the motel, Adam was about to get out of the car, but Dean stopped him with a hand on the back of his neck again. Adam blushed automatically and he wished Dean would stop doing that.  
"When we go in there, if Sammy's on the laptop I'm going to ask him if he was surfing for porn, and I want you to see if he's lying when he gets all offended and says 'no'."

Adam rolled his eyes and asked, "And if he is?"

"Wink, and if he isn't, you have total permission to smack me over the head."

Adam didn't really get the the logic behind the code but he understood and nodded. Together they went into the room and sure enough Sam had his laptop open, the screen facing away from the door so they couldn't see its contents. When Dean asked, Sam reacted like he was disgusted as had been predicted, but when Adam dug around in his head for the answer, he kicked Dean in the ankle and winked. Dean laughed so hard he fell over.


	16. SneakPeek Oneshot

**Note:** I realized that while I haven't been working on Ch.16 necessarily I have written things for this particular fanfic-universe. :3 Here's a one-shot that's actually a scene coming up in the story a little ways, probably several chapters later. I'll be posting an 'epilogue/post-story' type one shot next.

* * *

Sneak-Peek One-shot

"Hey chuckleheads, c'mere I want you to see something'," Bobby called from the front porch.

Dean and Sam were inside looking through various texts in preparation for their latest hunt. Some sort of creature that wore meat-suits like a demon or an angel, but without total control, they functioned in dreams, killing the person while they were sleeping and then devouring their spirit before it could escape to its final resting place. They were trying to figure out how they could possibly kill one, seeing as they nearly got _themselves_ killed going after it. For the time being they were recouping at Bobby's, with their recently reclaimed little brother and the girlfriend he'd acquired during his few months MIA.

"What is it Bobby?" Dean asked, though he was already out of his seat and heading towards the porch, half empty beer in his hands with Sam on his heels.

"Nothing, just a bit of Freud theory in action, just wanna prove my point," Bobby said, as if that explained anything. Dean raised his eyebrows at him, waiting for an answer, and when he got none he turned to Sam.

Sammy looked away, disgruntled, so clearly whatever their surrogate-father had said, wasn't good. Dean tried to glare but Bobby cuffed him over the head and pointed. Dean's eyes followed the direction of his gesturing hand and saw his youngest brother Adam standing on one side of his beat up, ancient blue pick up, and his woman, Tabitha standing on the other.

"You are unbelievable," Tabitha told him, her arms flung out at her sides.

Adam had an expression on his face that expressed a want for peace but not necessarily for capitulation as he said, "Baby, you can't get between a man and his car, it's like natural law, don't gimme that look."

"You'd really pick this heap of junk over me? You're serious?"

"Take that back."

"What? That you'd pick-"

"Don't call 'er a heap of junk."

Tabitha gaped at him, "Fuck you, it _is_ junk, and I don't know why you spend so much time-"

"Take it _back_," Adam snarled.

"No, _jerk_."

Adam's arms which had rested on the edge of the bed fell to his side and he growled, "Fine...bitch."

Tabitha snatched her duffel out of the back and stormed off, calling over her shoulder, "See how great a lay your precious truck is, then, I'm done, you asshole."

Adam stood there, on his side, arms crossed for a moment, and then he ran his hands through his hair and turned his back on his girl. He leaned against the side of the trunk, and Dean was feeling suddenly immensely uncomfortable. He watched as his little brother scowled and snorted and then slowly turned around, a begrudging plight on his face.

"C'mon, Tabs, seriously? Come back!"

"No!"

"_Tabby_, don't do-"

"Don't you 'Tabby', me, douchebag!"

And soon Adam was down the road after his girl, pleading with her, and Dean and Sam were watching them go, silent as the similarity washed over them like a tidal wave.

Then, easy as anything Bobby said, taking a swig of his beer, "That right there, that's what it would sound like if you two were fuckin' around."

Dean had been nursing his beer close to the chest and just taken a long pull himself just to get the disconcerting pattern of thoughts out of his head, and then Bobby's words hit him. As it turns out, you can't breathe beer.


	17. PoststoryEpilogue type oneshot

**Note:** So the end of this story is pretty far off, but when it does end, this is basically what happens afterwards. In case any of you were wondering. :] I have loads of supernatural fanfiction that I don't upload over here, I keep it all on my Livejournal account. Because the uploading process here is a real chore, and if I uploaded every single thing I wrote for the spn fandom over here too, I'd always be uploading stuff. And my fanfiction list would be a mile long. So, sorry about that. xD But just wanted you guys to know that there is in fact stuff for this story being written, it's just not necessarily the next chapter.

* * *

Post-Story/Epilogue type one-shot

The house feels like a grandmother's house. The wallpaper is muted and floral, and there's carpet floors in the bathrooms (weird colors too, like peach, or pale orange, or mint green), and all the light switches are on the corridor wall, outside the rooms they belong too. Sam had run his hands over all the walls of his staked out bedroom like a blind person trying to find it, and had thrown a silent tantrum, mouthing curses and senseless exclamations like, 'it has to be here, there's a light on the ceiling, there's gotta be a god damn light switch mother_fucker_'. Then the light turned on overhead, nearly blinding him for real, and Dean poked his head in through the doorway, muttering, 'I didn't drop you _that_ many times as a baby, shit'.

There's no washer or dryer, just a large rusted sink outside, and a metal tub big enough for Sam to sit in with his knees hugged to his chest, and a washboard. The clothes lines are four in number, and long, taking up a quarter of the awkward sized backyard. There's a fence around the property but Sam doesn't know why. There's no neighbors for miles. All this acreage and nothing to do with it. Dean drove himself reckless through all the wild fields, crumpling beautiful flowers and shrubs and nearly ruining the impala's undercarriage, for hours.

Adam threw himself into dusting off the furniture and seeing if any of it could still be used. Then, as if carpentry was second nature he set about sanding and shaping the old wooden pieces, and sewing up gaping holes in the sofa cushions. Lenny laid about, 'getting lazy in his old age, stupid dog' Dean had said. Lenny was only two years old. Barely a teenager.

After a handful of weeks filled with silence, song birds chirping and cicadas thrumming, the three of them were sitting around the dining room table playing bullshit. Retirement didn't look good on them, and Dean was already itchin' to hunt. Sam admitted he missed the open road, but something about the house was keeping him put, and the wanderlust was like a weed he was too lazy to pull. Adam didn't appear to have any feelings towards the subject one way or another, but then again that's how he was about most everything. Lenny didn't get a say, he wedged himself between their six legs, snoring louder 'n sin, sending the table quaking under their callused elbows.

"This is pathetic," Dean commented absently, "two fours."

He laid down two cards on the ever mounting stack and Adam sighed, "Bullshit."

"I am not picking up those cards." Resolute, lazy, tired? The three of them stared at the card pile. Who was awake enough to pick at him for it?

"Dean just pick up the fucking cards," Sam troubled him.

"Nngh," was all the fight left in him as he dragged the heaping stack towards himself, idly straightening them out and adding them to his hand, which was now most of the deck.

"Four fives," Adam quipped, laying down four cards, "what's pathetic?"

"Us, and you pick those up, that's not-"

Adam flipped the cards, revealing them all as fives before snapping them into neat order on the table and holding them out to Dean, "We put two decks together, Dean, there's eight of each."

"Oh, that's just shit."

Sam rolled his eyes, and then cringed when he felt the pinpricks in his leg telling him it was finally waking up, "So whaddyou wanna do, Dean?"

"Really? I wanna kill something."

"Three sixes," Sam set his cards down and offered, "there's plenty of buck if you head out the back of the house a mile or two."

"You know what I mean, bitch, five sevens," Dean all but slammed his cards down on the table.

"One of those is a two, Dean," Adam pointed out numbly and Dean grumbled and pulled the two out, leaving the truthfully five sevens in the pile.

"One eight," Adam mumbled, "well go find a case, Sam and I aren't gonna up and abandon the place while you're out."

"Two nines."

"Eight tens," Dean mumbled as he was sifting through his hand, plucking out each ten he came across and then nudging them vaguely in the direction of the pile, "like I'm gonna go out hunting by myself and leave you two here to get fat and lazy."

"Three elevens."

"There's no elevens, idjit-"

"Fuck, I mean jacks, leamme 'lone."

"Isn't retirement supposed to be about getting fat and lazy?"

"Don't say retirement, Sammy, makes me feel old."

"Two queens," Sam chuckled, "and you're thirty three, you _are_ old."

"Eight kings, fuck you, I'm not old."

"Dean those were my last cards, you don't have to play, I won."

"Bitch!"

Dean petulantly threw his cards to the ground. None of them were up for a hundred and four pickup. Lenny wheezed at them and rearranged himself, forcing all their legs awake and a cacophony of grumbling and swearing and hisses to fill the kitchen.

"This place feels like it should have an old lady living in it with lots of family and kids running around," Adam noted.

Dean's face was twisted in discomfort at the slow trickle of feeling creeping into his legs, and his words came out bitter sharp, "So why we still stayin' here? Not like it's gonna have that with us around."

"I dunno, maybe."

"No way, cuddles, not 'less we pull a Brangelina and start collecting kids like knick knacks."

Sam glared at him, "Dean, people don't collect kids like their objects."

"Brangelina does."

"And quit saying that."

Dean said it again, just to be a jerk, and Adam closed in on himself saying, "What about kids like us."

His brothers quieted and looked at him blankly.

"There've gotta be little orphan annies who lost their mommy and daddy to a demon or a vampire nest or whatever it was that went bump in the night, we could collect them."

"Dean, you're a bad influence on the kid," Sam accused raggedly, and Adam wanted to grumble that he was twenty three now and not a kid, but his face was determinedly absent of feeling. Attempting to express emotion at this point was too much effort.

"Good idea you've got there, Professor Xavier."

Sam slouched in his seat and crossed his arms, "Kids _aren't_ knick-knacks, Dean, what would we do with them?"

"Raise them, send 'em to school, you know, normal kid stuff," Dean retorted, "and I raised you just fine, didn't I?"

The argument grew swiftly around him, and it took Adam a while to have the knee-jerk reaction he should have had originally. Delayed reflexes and all. What had he created?


End file.
